One Reason
by ForceMage56
Summary: Jason's a survivor. He always has been, always will be. It dosesn't matter who or what he's up against, he is going to get out alive or die trying. He is going to get out of Arkham no matter what, even if he has to become something else entirely to do so, and God help anyone who gets in his way.
1. The Hunger for Revenge

_Talia's fingers run through his hair as he lays sprawled out on the dojo floor, head in her lap and partially delirious after a brutal training session._

" _You're so much stronger than he'll ever know than he'll ever hope to be," she whispers. Something that could almost be described as pride is barely detectable in her words._

" _You are a survivor, regardless of circumstances, regardless of odds. That's not something that can be learned. All the training in the world won't give you the strength to continue the fight when all seems lost, to claw through six feet of dirt with nothing but your bare hands. It's something you had long before you were Robin. He did not give it to you, and he can never take it away. That will to survive? It's all you, Jason." She presses a chaste kiss to his bloody, sweat-covered brow._

" _You burn and rage and fall and rise again. You are no Robin. You are a Phoenix and no one, not Batman, not Joker, not an act of man or even God himself, will ever hold you back."_

 _Her sharp smile begins to fade as exhaustion catches up with him._

" _You will rise, and they will all burn."_

Jason jerks awake to the sound of every door in the cell block wrenched open with an almighty, echoing clang.

He drops his head back onto the sad excuse for a pillow and tries to push the hazy memories of the past away. He tries not to think about his time with Talia, to think about Arkham's walls closing in on him, to think about the Joker whose cell is three doors down from his and laughs in his sleep. He definitely tries not to think about the guards who've made a habit of dragging him from his cell in the middle of the night and shoving a ring gag past his teeth when he's too drugged up to put up any kind of defense. Just think about survival, he tells himself. Think about getting through the day.

Jason shudders and gags as he fails miserably and last night's memories come rising to the surface. Nausea builds, but he forces it back down. If he shows any weakness, anything, it will only get worse and he knows worse. Crime Alley beat "worse" into him young. He knows not to spout nonsense about how things can't get any worse, because Murphy's Law is a bitch. Things can always, _always_ become worse.

But hey, who knows, maybe the esteemed and almighty Bat will swing by for a visit to reinforce that this is for his own good. Those nice doctors (who were definitely not on the Joker's payroll) and the pills (that the guards happily force down his throat every night out of sight of the cameras) aren't giving him hallucinations and screwing with his situational awareness. They're all here to help him stop being crazy and are you ready to come home yet and be a good, nonlethal, obedient Batboy, now Jason?

He throws an arm over his eyes with a groan. Maybe it's a good thing that none of the Bats have deigned to visit him in the two weeks he's been here. Having to listen to an actual Bat spout that self-righteous bullshit at him after everything he's been through since Batman dragged him through the front gates… Someone would die, and it would probably be Jason. He'd carve open his own wrists in a heartbeat to avoid another self-righteous lecture. _Stop talking to me like you know me, you don't know anything!_

Fuck it. Jason drags himself out of his cell and staggers toward the cafeteria. No point in thinking about what hell's waiting for him today, time to get some food in him quickly. With any luck, he'll be able to wash the taste of that guard out of his mouth or flush some of the drugs from his system.

Why did he have to start remembering his time with Talia now of all times, he grouses. He sinks into his usual corner with his back to the wall and looks at a plate of what he hopes is powdered eggs. He ignores the predatory states from the other inmates and takes a tentative bite. Joker's unwanted interest in him has made him persona non grata since day one. He sits alone, and unbidden, Talia's words echo in his memory.

" _You will rise, and they will all burn."_

He almost laughs at that as he dig in. Almost, because laughing alone for no good reason is a sign of insanity, and he doesn't need to encourage the good doctors of Arkham any more.

 _Glad one of us thinks so, Talia. Me? I think I'm going to die in here. Dead in some empty corridor, won't even get to go out with a bang this time. Or maybe I will. Fucking clown._

" _Then why are you still fighting? Why not just end it? It's not as if you don't know how."_

His fork stops halfway to his mouth. Now there's a thought. Jason could just deny Joker the satisfaction of killing him again. It wouldn't be too hard. All he'd have to do is break the plastic fork in his hand in half and slice open the artery in his neck. He'd be dead before anyone could stop it. The look on the clown's face would be priceless, not that Jason could get to see it, but he can definitely imagine it.

" _So why don't you?"_

Now there's the million dollar question. Jason could have offed himself on day one, but he didn't. He knew what he was in for from the very second Joker first laid eyes on him.

 _The Joker's twisted smile sprung to life, teeth flashing in the dim light as he leaned against the bars of his cell as the guards dragged Jason down the hall to his cell. He looked like his birthday had come early and he didn't say anything. He just laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed-_

Bastard could have laughed for hours. Time has a tendency to get funny when all you can see is a timer hitting zero as you realize no one is coming to save you.

"Yea," Jason mutters under his breath. "No one's coming to save you and you're definitely not getting out of here alive at this rate, so what the hell are you doing, Jason."

"Yes, bird boy, what _are_ you doing?"

Jason's head snaps up just in time to see the Joker stroll over to his table. God damn it, Jason's usually out of here and on the move long before the rest of the inmates even have a chance to get out of bed. The less time he spends in common areas, the less chance he had of running into Joker, the less chance he has of running into trouble. Of course today he just had to spend time talking to himself and not watching the clock and now he's face to face with the damn clown. Fucking great.

"What? No answer for your old uncle J? You don't call, you don't write, and then you come into my house," Joker says, gesturing widely, "and I hardly see you! It's almost like you're avoiding me! Tch, tch, tch, honestly, kids these days have no manners."

He shakes his head with comical disappointment, "Oh well, if I couldn't beat some etiquette into you while I beat you to death, I guess there's just no helping it." He leans forward, grin turning predatory "But I'm not about to give up on you!"

The Joker opens up his arms, projecting his next words to the room. "Just what would dear Batsy say if I just gave up on his wayward Robin, especially after he entrusted me with your care. Why, he'd never forgive me!" He turns back to Jason with a disappointed look on his face. "We can't have that now, can we?"

All the noise in the room cuts out as the tension skyrockets. Everyone from the inmates to the guards watch them with wary eyes. Jason grinds his teeth and desperately tries to stomp down his rising panic. Living in this nightmare was bad enough but now they all know… Fuck fuck fuck!

Cold sweat coats the plastic fork in his hand, and he is tempted to try his (admittedly pathetic) fork-through-the-throat plan just to escape the scrutiny. Before, everyone knew that the Joker and the Red Hood had it out for each other, but now that they knew that he was a Robin-

" _You are no Robin."_

His rapidly derailing train of thought slammed to a stop.

" _You are a Phoenix."_

He grinned as he slowly rose to his feet.

 _A Phoenix, huh Talia? Well, I'm either dead or I'm not, and if I'm going to die in here, I might as well go out in style._

"Avoiding you? Why the hell would I be avoiding you?" Jason stalks around the small table until he's standing uncomfortably close to the Joker. He can see the scars in detail and the madness in those dead eyes.

"What, you think I'm afraid of you? Don't make me laugh! Why the hell would I be afraid some third rate clown reject who couldn't even kill me properly?"Jason felt his grin go downright feral as he stared death in the face. "Go back to mooning over some lunatic in a bat suit, and I'll let you know if you're ever worth my time."

You could have heard a pin drop on the other side of the island. The entire room held its breath as Joker's smile went from mocking to downright terrifying.

"Not worth your time, huh, boy? Well, maybe you're right. After all, here I am, the host of this little mad house, neglecting the newest member of our little family. This must be remedied at once! What do you say boys?" He proclaims, spinning to face the rest of the room. "What do you say we give our wayward Robin a proper welcome?"

The roar of approval is deafening as the entire room was on its feet in seconds. The handful of guards that were patrolling the room slip out the doors.

"Just be careful not to break him too badly boys," Joker laughs as he disappeared into the crowd. "We're not done with him yet."

Jason's back hits the wall as he's rushed on all sides.

He's backed into a corner, outnumbered fifty to one, reaction time dulled from a cocktail of drugs and nightly beatings, and Jason hasn't felt this alive in years.

Two inmates break out ahead of the crowd, trying to pin him to the wall. The first one falls back, clutching his throat where his Adam's apple had just been crushed while the other is thrown back into the mob. There's an audible snapping sound when no one bothers to help break his fall. The crowd surges forward.

 _No need to pull my punches._

Another drops screaming, clutching his shattered kneecap.

 _No one in this room deserves to get out of here alive._

Jason is knocked back into the wall when punch catches him across the face.

 _Except for me._

He grabs the arm before it can retract and strikes at the joint.

 _I earned to live when I dug my way out of my grave three years ago._

He drives his fist into a lean stomach and ignores the kicks to the back of his knee.

 _I refuse to die in this never ending nightmare._

Dodge, counter, break, repeat.

 _I'm done waiting to be saved._

A fist slams into his side and something shifts. The injury fuels his rage.

 _I'm done waiting for a miracle._

He locates the person responsible for breaking a rib and roughly grabs both sides of his head and twists.

 _I finally found a reason to keep going._

His breath is driven out of him as he's slammed into the wall.

 _Survival isn't about winning._

A blow to the side of the head has Jason seeing stars.

 _It's about winning just enough to stay in the game._

More kicks to the back of his battered legs send him to the ground.

 _I'm getting out of here alive_.

He curls in a ball, wrapping his arms around his head for protection from the blows and spit that rain down upon him.

 _And when I do, I'm coming for you, Bruce!_


	2. Good Intentions Only Do So Much

Batman steps over shattered plastic and what's left of what was most likely once a cafeteria table, surveying the carnage.

Dozens of inmates are sprawled across the floor with injuries ranging from shattered limbs to ruptured organs. Some are still moving, clutching limbs and wailing. Others just stare at the ceiling with glassy eyes. In another corner of the room, dead bodies lay covered with sheets in preparation of being moved to the morgue.

Batman watches silently as another succumbs to his injuries and is abandoned as the paramedics rush to another who still clings to life with grim determination etched deep into their expressions. Many of them will not survive, and those who do will most likely be crippled for life.

Batman turns away as one of the injured lets out one final gasp, the death count rising higher and higher.

 _Jason did all this?_

He remembers the look of defeat and acceptance Jason wore when he brought him to Arkham. A part of him had hoped that maybe Jason had finally accepted that he needed help. That he understood he had become the monster that he had always fought against, that he needed to be stopped. The Jason he knew would have never become the Red Hood, would have never become this mindless killer. He didn't want to believe it, he still doesn't want to believe that his son has become this! But after Jason became the deadliest crime boss in Gotham history and then the incident with Tim... this is the only place for him.

Dick was holding out hope that Arkham would be able to tell them what was wrong with Jason and maybe be able to help him restore some of his sanity but -

37 dead and 17 more barely hanging onto life and countless more injured. Only the Joker had ever managed a death count like that while under Arkham's watchful eye.

A part of him is absolutely disgusted at the very idea of comparing his son to a monster like the Joker, but there was simply no other data point to compare this massacre too. None of the other rogues besides the two had managed to inflict this kind of loss of life inside Arkham's walls. Not even close.

"Batman." Gordon's voice brings him out of his rapidly darkening thoughts.

"Jim," he responds, turning to face the police commissioner. "What have you found?"

Gordon sighs and flips through the reports in his hands. "From what we can tell Hood started the fight, and considering his less than stellar reputation in the underground it wouldn't have been hard." He flips through some more pages. "Looks like he triggered an emp in the system, shut down everything from the automatic door locks to the camera's right before the fight started, once the system was down the entire island descended into chaos. The tech guys pulled the device that caused the blackout out of the main cable that runs under the maximum security cell block. Look's like he put it there shortly after he was incarcerated. Everything we've found looks like he was planning something big and was just waiting for his moment."

Batman turns the information over in his head. Jason's more than capable of pulling off something of this scale, but something about this whole situation feels wrong. Jason was never one to cause chaos just for the sake of it. Even during his turf war with Black Mask every move he made, no matter how destructive and senseless, was a part of a much bigger plan. "Where is Red Hood now?"

"That's just it, we can't find him."

"What?!"

"The guards had their hands full keeping the rest of the facility under lockdown after the system went haywire, by the time they got everything back under control Hood had vanished. There's no sign of escape, but he's not on the grid either and his gear's gone from lockup. I have my men combing the facility from top to bottom, but so far, nothing."

"Anyone else missing?"

"All inmates accounted for except him."

Something's definitely not right. He feels a cold dread creep into his chest. "The Joker?"

"Hasn't left his cell, his security runs on a separate power source from the rest of the prison. When the main system went offline, his cell went into lockdown. Guess that fancy Wayne tech actually did its job for a change. Anyway, he wasn't anywhere near Hood when the fight started. We have footage of him in his cell from bed check last night through the entirety of the incident. I'll send you a copy of the footage, but nothing we've found suggests that he was involved."

Bruce lets out the breath he was holding. If Joker had gotten his hands on Jason again after he was the one who put Jason within his reach… Bruce would never forgive himself.

"Anything else?"

"Nothing yet, but something about this whole situation has me on edge. Hood's always had a temper, but starting a fight when he's outnumbered over 50 to 1? That's not so much hot-headedness as that's downright suicidal, or at least it should have been." Gordon turns to look at the broken bodies scattered across the floor.

"I don't know what's more insane: that he started the fight that should have killed him, or that he won," the commissioner says, shaking his head. "Something set him off. It must have been big for him to take on those kinds of odds. I'll have my men go over all the security footage from the moment he was incarcerated to today once they get the system up and running again, but if nothing was reported, I doubt we'll find anything."

"Send me a copy when you're done," Bruce growls as he sweeps out of the room.

As much as he wished it wasn't true, picking fights and starting a riot wasn't out of character for Jason. Neither was staging a violent escape plan. It was the two combined that gave him pause. Crippling security and escaping in the confusion was one thing, but starting a fight against overwhelming odds just after setting off the EMP? There's no logical reason to try to start a riot himself, with all the different volatile elements within Arkham it wouldn't take much more than the slightest opportunity for a riot to start. Why would he take that kind of risk with the security system already disabled?

Rage? Hysteria? Some kind of psychological compulsion to kill like Zasz?

 _Could Jason have truly fallen so far?_

Batman shakes himself. There's no point in speculation when he doesn't know all the facts. Right now, he needs to focus on finding Jason before any more lives are lost.

"Oracle."

His earpiece crackles to life. " _Here."_

"I need you to go over all the security footage from Arkham over the last two weeks, as well as all the reports coming out of Arkham involving the Red Hood."

He hears typing on the other end of the line. " _So Jason was the cause of the riot?"_

"It looks that way. It also looks like he might have escaped in the confusion."

" _Damn it, we need to find him. Fast."_

"GCPD is already searching the grounds. Monitor their communications in case they find anything and see if you can narrow down possible points of escape. None of the guards reported seeing him during the riot. He must have stayed away from the chaos after he escaped the cafeteria."

" _Cell Block C is still under reconstruction and was untouched. The riots were concentrated in the other cell blocks, so getting from the main cafeteria to the unfinished block without running into trouble would have been child's play for him."_

Bruce brings up his own mental map of Arkham. "Prisoner belongings are also held in Cell Block C."

" _Exactly. There are other potential escape routes he could have taken, but this is the only one that he wouldn't have had to pass through the fighting to reach."_

"I'll check it out. Keep an eye on the GCPD communications. I want to know the minute they find anything."

" _Done. Do you want me to alert the rest of the birds? They'll want to know what's going on."_

"Inform Nightwing as well as Robin once he's out of school. Tell them to suit up, I'll meet them at the cave when I'm done here. Red Robin probably already knows about the alert. Have him help you go over any reports, footage, or any other information you can find."

" _What are we looking for?"_

"You'll know when you find it. There's something about this whole situation that just doesn't add up. Apparently, Jason started a fight just after the EMP went off."

" _That doesn't sound out of character."_

"He was outnumbered at least fifty to one and most of the people he fought are now dead."

" _What?! There's no logical reason for him to endanger his own escape plan like that and-"_ her voice suddenly cuts out. " _Did you say they're all dead?"_

"Not all but most of them, 37 dead from his fight alone at last count. More in critical condition, many of them won't make it."

" _That's… insane. None of you could take on odds like that without some kind of help and_ definitely _not without a good reason. You're saying that Jason started a fight, completely outnumbered, in the middle of his escape attempt and killed them all with his bare hands?"_

"That's what all the evidence is pointing to. Either we're missing something big or he's farther gone than any of us thought." Batman says as he enters the cellblock and begins to scan the area.

" _No kidding, If we don't find him soon this could get really bad in a hurry."_

Batman runs his hand over the edge of a heavy-duty tarp that cuts the construction area off from the rest of the prison. It should be completely taut, but it has just enough give to make him suspicious. The tarp itself had been provided by Wayne enterprises and could withstand everything from a combat knife to the shock wave of a bomb, but the real strength of it came from the tethers holding it in place. Triple strength fibers made from the molecule up and stronger than steel, the same material that made up his grapple lines, should have held the tarp in place. One of those lines had somehow been cut. Without that line, the tarp would have just enough give for a person fit under. There's only one knife in all of Arkham that could have possibly cut that line, and it's missing.

The memory of Jason slicing one of his lines off his ankle as he lead them on a chase across Gotham's rooftops rises to the surface. He should have figured out the identity of their masked opponent that very same day. If he had come to terms with Jason being under the hood then and there he could have acted that much sooner. If he had got Jason the help he so desperately needs, then maybe… maybe things wouldn't have gotten this far.

Using his grapple to scale over the tarp, he lands on the other side. Nothing looks undisturbed at first glance, but there are trails through the dirt and sawdust too new to have been created any more than a few hours ago. A pallet loaded up with site materials had been moved, first away from the wall and then back. It doesn't take long to force the pallet away from the wall and find a hole in the wall just big enough to fit through. A rope attached to the bottom of the pallet reaches all the way down to the rocks below

"Oracle, I found his exit point. He escaped through a breach in the wall caused by reconstruction and climbed down the cliffs and onto the rocks. He probably swam back to Gotham from there."

" _He swam back? Of course he did, I'll inform GCPD that the Red Hood escaped and have them secure the cell block. I'll also send a tip for them to start combing the waterfront. Anything else?"_

"Tell them not to engage if they find him. We'll deal with him, he's our responsibility."

" _Damn right he is."_ She says as the line chirps. " _I've got Nightwing and Red Robin on the line, patching them through."_

Dick speaks first. " _Bats, I just heard about the riot, was it really-"_

"It was Jason _,"_ Bruce says as he called the batwing to pick him up. "He's the one who sent the security systems offline and used the ensuing riot as a cover to escape."

It is Tim who speaks up next. " _I've been listening on GCPD communications since the alert went out and I heard something that sent up a huge red flag. Apparently, the riot itself had few casualties, but there was some big fight separate from the riot where almost all participants are either in critical condition or dead."_

" _What do you mean separate from the riot? And what on earth made that fight so deadly? What happened in there?"_

Batman grimaces. "Oracle, fill them in. I'm heading back to the cave now." He climbs into the batwing and turned it back toward the city.

" _You mean Jason did all that, by himself?"_ Tim exclaimed in disbelief when Barbara is done.

" _B,"_ Dick's voice shakes, " _How many?"_

The Oracle answers for Bruce. " _43 as of two minutes ago."_

" _43 people, he killed 43 people,"_ Dick echoes. His voice cracks. " _Bruce."_

"We will find him, Dick, before he can hurt anyone else. And we'll make sure he gets the help he needs. I promise." He says, ignoring the use of names on the coms for once. This hits too close to home for all of them.

Tim's voice comes back on the line. " _He's right, N. I've got a list of all of Jason's known safe houses. If everyone takes a district, I'm sure we could at least narrow down where he went."_

"Nightwing and I will do it. For now, you stay at Wayne Tower."

" _What? Why? You think Jason's going to come after me not even 24 hours after he breaks out of Arkham?"_

" _He's got a point Red, Jason almost killed you once, and he's clearly not thinking straight. If he comes after you-"_

" _He could be coming after any of us,"_ Tim interrupts. " _Yeah, he's targeted me in the past but it was you, B, and Robin who put him in Arkham. There's no way he's going to let that slide. We're all at risk."_

Batman grinds his teeth and reluctantly gives in. "Split the list in half. Red Robin, you and Nightwing take the south side and Robin and I will take the North. I want check ins every thirty-minutes. Jason's unpredictable at best. Be on guard."

" _On it."_

" _Heading out now."_

"Oracle-"

" _We will find him, Bruce. Wherever Jason's gone, he can't hide forever."_ There's a click as she closes the line.

He takes a deep breath, allowing himself a moment of calm. "I know."

He has no doubt in his mind that wherever Jason's gone, wherever he's hiding, they will find him.

* * *

"Wakey wakey, boy toy!"

Electricity surges through Jason's body, pulling his muscles taut and turning his vision white.

The pain disappears as suddenly as it had come, leaving his body slumped and his mind scrambled for a second, disoriented. That should have sent him crashing to the ground-

That's when the biting sting of metal wrapped around his wrists, holding them suspended on either side of his head, registers.

Jason raises his head and came face to face with a sickening red and white grin just inches away.

 _Oh hell._


	3. Part of Me is Fighting this

Joker looks just _thrilled_ that he's awake, more thrilled than he usually looks anyway. It's hard to tell with that permanent smile. Of course, it's better than when he stops smiling. That's when you run.

"There you are birdy! I was wondering when you would wake up! You've been out for days! Or was it hours?" he muses while spinning a taser around in his hand.

"I forget. I'm so bad with time, it's shocking!" he declares before driving the taser into the exposed skin of Jason's neck.

His entire body seizes up, screaming with the pain he refuses to voice.

Everything was burning, _burning_ , _**burning-**_

The pain cuts out, once again leaving him slumped against the wall with his knees digging into the concrete under him. His head hangs down and he stares blankly at his reflection in the puddle of water (please be water) at his knees while laughter echoed all around. Well, this is just fuckin' perfect.

Jason slowly raises his head and glances around, automatically trying to figure out where he is. It looks like some old basement or sub-level judging by the lack of windows. It was probably a part of old Arkham that got built over when construction on the asylum started, if those inane circular drawings on the floor and walls were anything to go by. The chains securing his wrists to the wall looked new, though, and very familiar. If they aren't the bat-proof cuffs that Batman used during his transport to Arkham, he would -

A shattering pain explodes up his side, driving the breath from his lungs.

"Don't go zoning out on me now birdy, we haven't even started yet!" The Joker grins. The taser has been replaced by an old crowbar that looks _way_ to familiar.

"Boy oh boy, this just doesn't get old. When I think of the fun you and me are gonna have.. " He leaves the sentence unfinished, slamming the crowbar into Jason's side again. This time the pain is accompanied by the telltale creak of a rib giving way.

Jason clenches his jaw and refuses to make a sound, shoving away his fear and terror and clinging to his anger like a lifeline. He refuses to give the clown the satisfaction of knowing how much this is affecting him, how much pain he's already in from the fight in the cafeteria. He tensed for the next blow, but Joker is already moving away.

"Ah the good old crowbar, no matter how many times I put it to use, it never gets old! Especially with you. Now we've had some good times together, haven't we, birdy."

Jason shifts his weight back against the wall, trying to put a few precious inches between him and that damn crowbar as the clown advanced.

"Your death, for example. Now that was a great time, it had everything a grand evening needed! Lights, music, a deviously handsome host, one tenderized robin, a fashionably late guest of honor, and everything went out with a bang at the end of the night. Of course, you were delirious for most of it but hey what can you do. After all, some people just can't hold their hard knocks."

Joker shoves the end of the crowbar under Jason's chin, forcing his head up.

The look in Joker's eyes had become downright gleeful "You know you never did answer my question during our last little get-together. First, you kept passing out, which was just rude of you, and then you were dead, so I guess we'll have to answer it this time around huh birdy?" He raises the crowbar high.

"Forehand?" Pain streaks down his arm.

"Or backhand?" A hit to his stomach sends him gasping for air.

"A?" Red hot pain reverberates up his leg.

"Or B?" His head snaps back with the force of the blow.

His vision blurs after another blow to the head sends him reeling. No foolish hope this time, no one's coming to save him. He's on his own.

Last time he believed he only had to hold on long enough for Batman to arrive. He had known with every beat of his heart that Batman was going to save him. Right up until the timer hit zero and his world was reduced to fire and pain.

 _I knew pushing Joker would provoke him into moving up the timetable on whatever plans he had for me. I_ knew _I was hurling myself into this nightmare before he could drag me there on his terms. I got myself into this fucking mess, I'm going to get myself out._

He doesn't know how long the beating lasted, but finally, the hits came to a halt and he slowly lets his body rest back against the wall. White flashes danced across his vision with every dull throb of pain that echoes through his battered body.

A hand in his hair forces his head back up.

"Nothing to say, Hoody? No answer for your dear old uncle J?"

Jason spits out a mouthful of blood. "Go to hell!" he snarls, and tries not to wince at how weak his voice sounded.

"Hahaha!" Joker abruptly slams Jason's head into the wall. "Well, well, looks like we got a feisty one here! We are going to have a grand time you and I. Just you wait!"

Alarm bells start to go off in Jason's head. The way Joker's talking… it's different than in the warehouse. He keeps talking in future tense, like Jason's going to be here a while. Like Joker's planning on keeping him alive.

"As..." Jason coughs up more blood. "As fun as this little reunion's been, I have things to do, places to scout, and people to kill. Why don't you stop wasting both of our time and just get it over with."

"Unless you're afraid that you can't, you did botch it up last time." He pulls himself up until he's face to face with the clown, trying to sound cocky through a collapsed lung. "What? To much of a coward to try and finish me off a second time? Afraid you'll fail again? Pathetic."

The rage that he was expecting didn't come, instead Joker's laughter was almost giddy.

"Kill you?" Joker laughed. "Now that's funny!"

Eventually the laughter reduces to giggles and Joker returns his attention to Jason, drawing close once again.

"Now why would I do that?" All traces of mania had disappeared of his voice.

The implications of Joker's words makes Jason's blood run cold. Before he can begin to process what that meant for him, the door to his cell swings open and a guard walks into the room.

"Arkham's systems are almost up and running, Joker, time to go."

The Joker straightens up and dusts off his Arkham jumpsuit. "Well, time to get back to my adoring public, but don't you worry, I have just the thing to keep you company." He pulls a syringe out of his coat and holds it up to the light.

Jason jerks back, ignoring his body's protests, and pulls on the restraints. He would recognize a vial of Scarecrow's fear toxin anywhere. His mind starts racing. There's no getting away, no possible antidote available, and no fucking way that vial is full of anything but Crane's latest concoction. Any immunity he'd built up from previous exposure won't do a damn thing.

The only thing he can do is ride it out and hope that whoever's left to guard him doesn't decide to have some fun with him while he's blitzed out. Jason drops his head with a huff. This is gonna suck.

"Crane does make the best toys," Joker remarks before driving the needle into Jason's neck.

The second the toxin hits his bloodstream his vision begins to warp and the chains begin to spread down his arms. They're winding, wrapping, pulling tight around his neck before they continue down his chains dive into the concrete like a needle going through a cloth before reemerging to shackle him to the ground.

An animalistic sound escaped his clenched teeth as the walls began to close in. Closer and closer, dirt begins to trickle down from where the ceiling meets the walls, only the walls aren't concrete anymore. No, they're made of paneled wood and surrounded him completely, when had they gotten so close? Jason looks down only to see that the chains were actually strips of cloth tying him down to the padded bedding he lays on.

No! Not again! _Not again!_

He fight with everything he had, clawing at the strips, the wood paneling, the soft padding beneath him. Blood runs down his hands as he claws at his prison but no matter how much damage he does, it disappears in a second.

Hands burst from the ground and dragged him down. Dirt closes in around him, suffocating him, he can't breathe, _he can't breathe!_

The ground breaks beneath him, and he's tumbling through the empty air, down onto hard, unforgiving stone. His arms are shaking as he gets to his feet only for a punch from behind to send him flying into the wall. As he pushes himself up for the second time, a shadow loomed over him.

"You should never have come back, Jason."

Jason jerked back into the wall, broken fingernails digging into the ground as he stared up at the Bat.

"You should have stayed dead."

Jason tried to run but a slicing pain across his throat send him gasping to his knees. Blood ran from his throat in rivets, soon he was kneeling in a puddle of blood. His reflection stared back at him. Robin, all of fifteen years old stared back at him. Scared and bleeding the boy tried to speak through the blood pouring from his mouth. No sound escaped his mouth but Jason knew what he was trying to say.

 _"Why did you trust him? Why didn't you see that he was only using us? He was never coming to save us! He left us to die!"_ Ripples ran through the blood as the sound of footsteps reached his ears. The image had changed, now the Red Hood stared back at him. _"Why did you let us believe that we could have been a hero? Don't you remember? There's no hope in Crime Alley. Especially not for some street rat like us. This is what we were always going to become. This is what we're supposed to be."_

A hand in his collar pulls him to his feet. Heavy manacles wrapped around his wrists and ankles, causing him to stumble as he's shoved forward. Strong, practiced hands haul him upright. Jason tries to fight against the hands holding him but a blow to the back of his neck causes his limbs to shut down.

Voices, numerous and familiar swirl around him as he's hauled through those iron gates.

 _"I'm sorry, but this is where you need to be little wing. They can help you, I know they can. You can come home as soon, you just have to let them help you."_

 _"Cease your useless struggles Todd and accept your defeat. This is the only place for rejects like you, it's what you deserve."_

Bruce didn't say a word, didn't even look at him just turned and left. Disappearing into the night as he was dragged down some bloodstained corridor of Arkham and forced to his knees as the lights of the security cameras wink out one by one.

The shadows closed in, wrapping around him like hands. Hands everywhere, pulling at him, pulling him under, forcing past his lips and into his mouth, further, choking him. He gags, fighting back against the hands around him, but it's no use. There's no escape, there's never any escape.

Jason closes his eyes and lets go, letting himself slip away into the darkness.

* * *

Joker is practically skipping as he walks down the abandoned corridors under Arkham.

"Oh, this is going to be more fun than beating him to death the first time! What do you think, Boles?"

"Heh, kid's no coward, I'll give him that. Watching you break him is going to be downright entertaining. How the hell did you know that the Bat was going to bring him here anyway? Last month you were talking about an old friend coming to visit, then the next day the Bat drags the Red Hood here himself."

The Joker spin to face him, grin stretched into a twisted grin."It's very simple Bolesy. One well-placed rumor of a new shipment of drugs to draw in Hoody, an anonymous tip to the GCPD of Batsy's wayward Robin along with a certain location down at the docks and presto! One trusted up ex-Robin delivered to yours truly."

Boles shoots the clown a look of disbelief. "You telling me you tricked the Bat into bringing you Hood?"

"HA! By Jove, I think he's got it! I can't wait for the big reveal when the curtain rises and I introduce my newest pawn to all of Gotham! I know my Batsy, and this is just gonna leave him in tears!"

The Joker's grin turns downright demonic.

"And God only knows what it's going to do to his _son_."

Joker's laugh echoes down the hall.

* * *

So Bats think he's escaped Arkham and are now combing the city with the rest of the birds trying to hunt him down when in reality he never left Arkham? Fucking typical. Not that he was expecting a rescue or anything.

That particular piece of news came from one of the radios carried by the guards during their daily "food" delivery. It was a warning to all personnel that the Red Hood had escaped and has, so far, evaded capture and to be on guard blah blah blah. The guards who had brought him food had laughed themselves silly after they chucked the tray at his feet when the announcer got to the 'armed and dangerous, do not engage' part of the spiel. The beaten-half-to-death Red Hood currently stashed away under Arkham wasn't anywhere close to as intimidating as the one who had taken over the Gotham drug trade overnight had been.

 _Guess I'm going to have to make another intimidation run after I get out of this hell hole. Stringing up a bunch of Arkham guards who can't keep their hands to themselves sounds like a good place to start._

His thoughts were interrupted when the door to his cell was kicked open and the Joker strolled in holding… A _branding iron?!_ Oh _hell_ no!

His fingers claw at the ground as he tries to crawl away. His broken leg dragging uselessly behind him. He only managed a few inches before the half-healed fracture in his arm finally gives and he collapses on the hard stone floor. Not that putting those few more inches of space between them would do _anything_. Not that there was _anywhere_ to go! He's chained to the wall with Bat-strength chains for christ-sake! God this isn't happening.

Joker watched his reaction with what could only be described as glee. "What's wrong? Do you think I'm going to hurt you? Why? I'm not the bad one here. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's Batman. He's abandoned you… thrown you away like an unwanted puppy."

Talia's voice rang through his mind, filtering through Joker's monolog and past Jason's rising panic.

 _The most difficult decision a warrior has to make is when to give ground in a losing fight. If you cannot hold out against your enemy you_ must _decide what battles you can afford to lose. Or they may take from you far more than just your life._

"Can I have him, daddy? Oh, please, please, please, please! I'll take _real_ good care of him."

 _Show them weakness and fear. Let your outward defiance slip away and hold it all in. Waiting for the correct moment to strike and take your revenge is useless if you are too far gone to act._

"Anything to make you happy, princess. Just make sure people know he's _yours_."

 _If you cannot swallow your pride and make you captor believe that you are breaking then they_ will _break you. It will only be a matter of time._

"We don't want him to end back up here, do we?"

 _Give him what he want's huh? You better be right about this Talia._

"No we don't, daddy. I want to keep him forever!"

"No! Please! No!"

The brand comes down.

Jason's scream echoes through the empty corridors.

* * *

Nothing.

It's been two months since Jason escaped from Arkham and they've found nothing. None of his safe houses have been used, none of his known associates have been in contact with him, and Oracle's surveillance network has found nothing. There has been no sign of Jason anywhere in Gotham.

Batman expected Jason to go to the ground after his escape, perhaps even go far as to leave the city, but staying off the grid for this long? Something's up. Jason should have made a reappearance by now by either retaking control of his criminal empire or coming after the family, but there's been nothing.

Oracle's voice interrupts his train of thought.

" _Transport went off without a hitch, Harley Quinn is off the streets and back in her cell at Arkham. Nightwing and Robin are heading back now."_

"Good, any updates on Jason?"

" _Red Robin's following a lead on the west side but there's still nothing. That fight during the riot is the last time anyone saw him. It's like he just vanished into thin air."_

Bruce lets out a sigh. Why would Jason go to ground for so long? What's he planning now? If they don't find him soon they could be looking at an assault on Gotham to rival the initial rise of the Red Hood.

At least Harley Quinn was back in Arkham now. That's one less thing to worry about.

* * *

"So birdy, where do you think we should start today?"

Jason lifts his head with a barely suppressed groan as his eyes land on the woman sitting in front of him.

Harley Quinn sits perched on the edge of some office chair that had been dragged in by one of the guards. One delicate leg is crossed over the other, and she flips through a file in her hands. _His_ file, and considering how for the past few weeks she's used it to find every crack in his defenses, every hidden fear, every last shred of himself that he had managed to hide away from the Joker's constant mental assault, that file had definitely been provided by the Bats. There's no way that the one psych-eval he had undergone while above ground would have given her this much ammunition to use against him.

"During our last session, we touched on your abandonment issues, this time I'd like to round back to your anger issues."

Jason drops his head with a huff. Where's the Joker when you need him? His beatings and taunts were nothing compared to Harley's calculated, methodical, _surgical_ probing into his head.

 _Can't run, can't fight back, all I can do is endure._ A grim smile snuck onto his face despite everything. _Good thing I've had a lot of practice when it comes surviving the unsurvivable._

Electricity lanced up his spine causing his body to arch, slamming into the restraints.

"Now now birdy, we'll never get anywhere if you keep up that attitude." She spins the remote around idly as she considers him. "Now where were we? Oh yes, you're angry. You've had anger issues for as long as I've known you and long before you were running around as Batsy's little helper, if your file is anything to go by."

She tilts her head, "You picked it up during your time on the streets if I had to guess, probably weren't even pushing double digits then. Just another street rat fighting to stay alive one more day. Angry at the world."

"Bet you did anything to survive, just anything." Her grin sharpens. "Didn't you." It's not a question.

Damn it! Jason knows where this is going, If she got all that from his file, he's going to find whoever threw together that damn folder and throw them off the top of Wayne tower! Why the Hell did she have to rub salt in this half-healed, fuck, who does he think he's kidding, _still festering_ wound? God, he doesn't want to go back there, back to that alley, where the walls rose high around him and cut off all escape. A choice: pay off the theft with a bullet in the head or with his body. Not the first time, not the last.

A hand on his thigh tears him back to the present. Harley's face snaps into focus, now only inches away from where she kneels in front of him.

"There you are, I wondered where you went off to. Somewhere with more... _intimate_ company?" Jason jerked back, trying to put as much space as he could between them with a wall at his back, to get her fucking hands off, but she only moves closer until she is pressed up against him, hands sliding up his chest.

"Your file says that you, and I quote: 'experienced sexual abuse as a minor,'" _God damn it Bruce._ "We both know that there's a bit more to it don't we?"

Jason feels all the blood drain from his face. No no no no, no way she could have figured it out! He hadn't told anyone. Not even during his panic attacks back when he was Robin, which is how B found out about everything else he tried to leave in the Alley.

"You whored yourself out didn't you? Turned tricks in back-alley after back-alley until having some John down your throat became as natural as breathing." She leans closer until he can feel her breath on the shell of his ear. Her fingers traced the J-shaped brand just under his left eye.

"And deep, deep down, a part of you liked it." Jason recoiled, he could feel every crack in the wall as he tried desperately to get some space, any space, between him and the damn demon in front of him.

"You don't know anything!" he snarls.

"Oh I think I do, you spent your childhood fighting to survive on more day in a world out to kill you. Angry at the world, completely at the mercy of the streets, and desperate for any bit of control of your life. So you got down on your knees again and again, not for the money no, but for the illusion of control." Her twisted grin turns sharp, reminiscent of Joker's. "And you loved every second of it."

Jason jerks forward, trying to smash their heads together, but she is already gone and the telltale sting of a needle sliding into his neck has him recoiling once again.

"Not too fond of needles, are you? I think we'll have to change all of your medication over from pills to injections. Let's see if some track marks have an impact on that surly attitude of yours."

He sags against the restraints. The drugs made his limbs feel like they were filled with cement and his vision swam as the darkness rose once again. She picked up on the druggy parent part of his past, huh? Fan-fricken-tastic.

"Oh and by the way," she plucks a piece of paper from his file and dangles it in front of his face. "Those nice doctors declared you sane during your time upstairs. I guess we'll have to fix that," His vision began to swim and his world narrowed the grinning devil in front of him. "Now won't we?"

God, he's starting to crack. Picking your battles doesn't work against an enemy who only picks battles that you can't afford to lose, and then fights them with the precision of a fucking surgeon. It's getting harder and harder to let her mind games just wash over him. Some of her attacks were starting to stick and the _second_ she got her hooks into something important, he's done. She'd take his mind apart and _play._ Twist him into whatever the Joker wants him to be. Some new weapon against Batman, some pawn in the clown's latest scheme. She'd do it without breaking a sweat too. The Bats never saw her as much of a threat because she never had any ammunition to use against them. But the second she gets the slightest bit of information about you, the second she finds the cracks that you've fought so hard to hide, the second she finds your weak spots, the second she begins to push… You'd take a slow death over having to hear her say One. More. Word.

He felt the ghost of a smirk flicker across his face for just a moment.

That is unless you have an ace in the hole, and thanks to Talia he's got more than a few.

 _Harley's right about one thing, though. I_ am _angry._

The shadows grew, overtook his vision and dragged him down into unconsciousness.

 _Time to make them regret it._


	4. Even in these Chains you can't Stop Me

"He's still going, huh?"

"Yeah, he's still hanging in there. I figured he wouldn't last a month down here, let alone a full fucking _year._ Should go kick his ribs in again, I lost good money on that bet."

"Why not? Joker's little scheme doesn't kick off for a while. We've got time."

"O'day… That's the best idea you've had in a long time."

"Oh screw you, Chandler. All my ideas are good ideas." O'day grins as he pries open the false back of the empty supply closet while Chandler keeps a watch at the door. Not that it matters, why bother to monitor an out-of-the-way abandoned supply closet in some corner of intensive treatment when you had the entire rogues gallery to entertain you?

The false back gives way to a set of stairs that lead down to the forgotten tunnels that run under Arkham. Within a few minutes they reach the cell where Joker had stashed his latest toy.

Chandler shoves the door open, allowing for the dim flickering light from the hall to spill into the cell. The light doesn't do much in the way of illumination but both guards make out a body slumped against the cell wall. The figure doesn't so much as twitch when they walk into the cell, the door slamming shut behind them.

"Wakey, wakey Hood," Chandler mocks as he drives a heel into Hood's side. The kid raises his head slightly, unfocused eyes staring blankly ahead.

"Ha! Not so much as a peep! Not much left in there, is there?"

"The lights are on but no one's home. Did anyone have odds on a year?"

"I think Dwight put down a year, lucky bastard."

"Not so lucky, Dwight will have to wait until Joker's party's over to collect his winnings. That is, if he doesn't get shived by one of the 'guests'..."

"You know what the clown's planning?"

"Some big party for Batman. He's going to take over the island, Quinn's already setting it up now. It's going to be complete chaos."

"So now's the perfect time to kill you."

Both guards look at each other, startled before turning their gaze to the kid at their feet. The kid who is now looking up at them, green eyes locked on them with laser focus.

Chandler recovers first. "Kill us? You might have some fight left, but you've clearly had one too many hits to the head if you think you can kill us. Did you forget the fact that you're chained to the wall?!" He takes a step forward only for O'day to grab his arm.

"Wait… weren't his eyes blue?"

Hood lunges. The chains around his wrists offer no resistance and break easily after months of neglect. Chandler's head snapped back with the force of the punch the kid gives him. It sends the guard stumbling back into the wall.

Chandler goes for his gun, but it's too little, too late. Hood slams Chandler's head into the wall, twisting the hand that holds the gun to the side and pulling the trigger.

O'day's kneecap explodes in a shower of blood, and he sinks to the ground clutching his ruined knee.

The gun fires twice more, putting twin bullet holes through the O'day's hands.

Hood watches as the terror begins to register in Chandler's face as he realizes just who he is at the mercy of. O'day tries to crawl away but a bullet in the other knee stops that.

Hood drives the gun into Chandler's side, "Now, what the hell is Joker up to? I want details."

"S-screw you! I'm not telling you nothing!"

Hood rolls his eyes, tightening his grip around his captive's neck. "Nice double negative there moron, and for the record you _will_. The only question is how many pieces you'll be in before you tell me."

"I-I I don't know everything. None of us were told the whole picture, Boles had me rearrange the guard schedule so that the other guards on Joker's payroll could set the Blackgate prisoners free once he gets here! That's all I know, I swear!"

Hood tilts his head thoughtfully. The guard's posture relaxes slightly only for Hood to shift his grip on the man before pivoting and hurling the guard into the opposite wall.

"Really? That's _all_ you know? Sure there's not anything else you want to tell me while you still have all your limbs intact?"

Chandler cowers back against the wall. "I swear man that's all I know, I don't.. I don't..."

" _Attention all units."_

Hood stops, turning to look at the other cowering guard whose radio had just crackled to life.

" _Attention all units, the Joker has been apprehended. Batman in now in route to Arkham Island. I repeat, the Joker had been apprehended and is currently in transit to Arkham island. All units are to report to their stations immediately. Arkham island is now at security level Delta."_

Hood walks over to O'day, snagging the radio from his vest. "Huh, better get a move on." Hood muses putting a bullet through Chandler's foot when he tries to get to his feet. "Is my gear still in the cell opposite this one or did Joker move it?"

Chandler clutches his foot. "Yeah, what's left of it. Joker had your armor and weapons destroyed but he kept some of your equipment. He was planning on making something with what's left of it."

"Well then," Hood put a bullet through O'day's head before turning the gun on Chandler. "Time to get to work."

* * *

Batman glares at the bank of monitors that display Quinn's taunting face.

"You have one chance to surrender, Quinn."

"Tempting Bats, but no dice. Now the inmates are running the asylum. Well technically the Joker's goons shipped in from Blackgate, but you get the idea. Bye bye for now!" She squeals and there's a flash of an antique cane before the screen goes dark.

Batman grinds his teeth as he watches the monitors feeds turn to static. In the short time Joker's been free, he's caused half a dozen security breaches, released the Blackgate prisoners, freed Zasz, taken the warden hostage, and killed anyone in his path. Everywhere that monster goes, death and destruction follow. If he doesn't catch him soon, the entire island will fall under Joker's control.

His earpiece crackles to life and Oracle's voice comes on the line.

" _Batman, you picking this up?_ _Arkham Asylum just vanished off the network. Everything's gone dark. I'm completely locked out."_

"Joker' must be in control of the security system. He's probably isolated it from the grid."

" _That's not all he's done. All police feeds are reporting he's placed bombs all over Gotham. Says he'll detonate them if anyone sets foot on Arkham Island. It's being suppressed at the moment, but the story will break any time now."_

"He's lying. It's just a diversion to keep people away."

" _How do you know?"_

"I know him," he responds. "Have Red Robin hunt down the bombs, I doubt Joker would pass up the opportunity to cause even more chaos even as a distraction, and have Nightwing and Robin continue their patrols. There will be plenty of criminals eager to take advantage of the chaos."

" _Consider it done. I've been trying to patch into the guard radios, but the signals are up and down constantly. What has managed to get through doesn't sound good. Looks like you're in for a long night."_

Twenty minutes later, as he watches the clown slip through his fingers once again, Batman can't help but agree.

* * *

Jason watches as some Blackgate goons run by from his perch. You'd think Gotham criminals would have learned to look up by now. Apparently not. Jason leans back against a steel beam and continues fiddling with his old earpiece, or more accurately what is left of it. Other than a few flash-bang grenades and his grapple gun it was all that was left of his gear when he was brought to Arkham. He knows that Batman is on Arkham island and is somewhere in the Intensive Treatment building chasing after Joker thanks to the clown's constant taunting same building that Jason was currently in.

Getting out of the lower levels and up into prisoner transfer without being seen by Arkham personnel, inmates, or being picked up by the cameras is difficult enough. Having to avoid Batman as well makes the task of escaping this nightmare that much harder. That is, unless you can pinpoint Batman's location and make avoiding him priority number one.

Jason grins in triumph as the earpiece in his hand sputters to life. Jason pops the device into his ear and begin flipping through the preset channels until Oracle's voice comes on the line.

" _Batman! What's happening? Have you found Joker yet?"_

It takes everything Jason has not to jump as Bruce's voice comes on the line.

" _Joker's escaped. He's sealed himself off... He's got your father."_

" _No!"_ Jason can hear the raw panic in her voice.

" _Don't worry. I will find him."_

" _I know… I know, it's just…"_

" _Oracle, I will get him back. Joker will not win. I won't let him. I'm starting where he was taken. A guard named Frank Boles attacked him. If I find him, I'll find your father."_

" _Bruce, hurry. Please."_

Jason drops his head back against the wall as the line goes dead. Boles, huh. How no one saw that coming was beyond him. Most of the corrupt guards in Arkham were smart enough not to get any marks on their records for _any_ reason. If half the things Jason had heard during his time in Arkham were true, Boles' list of reprimands and suspensions was as long as his arm. To top that off Jason knew for a fact that there wasn't a single guard in Arkham who trusted, or even liked him. No one would bat an eye if he died tonight.

Now there's an idea. Only question is, can he do it without being caught? He's been beaten half to hell over the past year. If he draws _any_ group's attention he's done for. Staying undetected is the only option if he wants to get out of here alive.

The sound of elevator doors opening draws Jason's attention. He looks down to see Boles step out of the elevator dragging a beaten and handcuffed Police Commissioner.

Two seconds later Harley Quinn comes strutting into the room flanked by two Blackgate inmates.

"Alright Franky, B-man is on his way now. Mistah J wants me ta slow him down a little. While I'm doing that you're to clear out those pesky guards in the intensive treatment lobby. Got it?"

Boles shoves Gordon into the hands of the goons. "Done, just be ready to move when i'm done Quinn," he says as he walks out the doors.

Harley starts attaching explosives to elevator cable as the goons drag Gordon out of the room after Boles. After a second of hesitation, Jason pries open a nearby grate to the vent system and begins following Gordon.

Unlike the mountain of issues he has with Batman, Jason doesn't have anything against Gordon. He's one of the few people that hold Gotham together without the anonymity of a mask. That puts one Hell of a target on his back and yet he's never so much as flinched. He'd alway respected the guy. Hell, Gordon wanted to put the Red Hood in Blackgate. It was Batman who decided to bring him to Arkham. So if he can rescue Gordon without giving himself away he'll do it in a heartbeat.

Jason finally reaches the end of the ventilation shaft. He pries open the grate, grappling up to one of the many gargoyles that ring the ceiling of the intensive treatment lobby and gets settled just in time to see Boles walk up to the guards protecting the main entrance.

One of the guards notices Boles as he approaches. "Hey! Frank. Where you been?"

"Joker's got more men on the way. They're coming around the front of the asylum. Gotta stop them getting in! Quick! Get over there!" Boles orders snatching a gun out of one of the guard's hands.

"Dammit! C'mon. Everyone! Cover the main entrance!" Two of the guards immediately move to cover the entrance, guns trained on the door.

"How many are there, Boles?" One of them asks before turning back to glance at Boles. "Wait, hang on, how the hell do you know what-"

His words are cut off as Boles opens fire, shooting him in the back before turning his gun on the rest of the guards. Within seconds all the guards in the room are dead on the ground.

 _Yeah, that's Boles alright, Coward._ Jason thinks to himself as he watches Boles step over the bodies of his former brothers in arms.

"Quinn. It's clear! Get your ass in here."

Harley walks up to him as her men begin looting the dead guards.

"You're a real piece of work, Franky. A girl could fall for someone like you!" She gives a breathy sigh.

A voice comes on over Harley's radio.

" _Stop flirting with the hired help, Harley!"_ Jason's hands fly out to steady himself as Joker's voice takes him by surprise.

"Don't worry, sweetie. You know I only have eyes for you." She practically croons at the radio.

" _Good girl, now just tie up that one loose end and bring Gordon to the medical center. Got it?"_

"Understood, Mistah J!" She says as she plucks the gun out of Boles' hands and shoots him in the leg.

Boles hits the ground with a thud. "Quinn, what the hell!" he yells, clutching his leg.

"Sorry Franky, B-man's been using you to track the Commish here and it's way too early for that. It'll ruin my Puddin's party, and I can't let that happen." Boles eyes went wide as Joker's men loomed over him.

"Let him have it boys!" she yells as she walks out the door with the two goons holding Gordon right on her heels.

Boles tries to crawl away but he's quickly surrounded. Jason leans back against the wall and watches as the thugs Harley left beat Boles to a pulp. It's not nearly as satisfying as killing the bastard himself, but it's pretty satisfying all the same.

"He dead yet?"

"He's not moving no more."

"Good, I couldn't stand him. Always gave me a hard time."

One of the goons grabs a gun off the body of one of the murdered guards. "Come on, Joker wants this place locked down yesterday. Everyone grab a gun and spread out. Kill any guard you see!"

That gets a yell of approval as they all grab a gun and head out to secure the rest of the floor. It wouldn't matter once Batman found them, but it would slow him down just long enough for Harley to get Gordon to the medical center and move Joker's plan along.

Not that Jason is really thinking about any of that. He's too busy watching Boles. If growing up in the Alley had taught him anything, it's the difference between a beating that'll kill you and a beating that won't. And the beating those leg breakers just doled out sure as hell wasn't the former. _Amateurs_.

Sure enough, 30 seconds after Joker's men had cleared out, Boles starts moving. Crawling away or at least trying to. It's kinda hard to crawl anywhere when half the bones in your body are broken.

He'll probably try to hide under one of the walkways or in the floor grates. Not that it'll matter. He might be able to hide from the inmates but whatever technique Batman's using to track the guard will lead him _right_ to Boles.

Not for a few minutes, though. Now that Joker's men got their hands on military grade firearms, Batman will have to switch to stealth tactics and that'll buy Jason maybe a minute more.

He doesn't have long, but if he times this just right…

This is an opportunity he just can't pass up.

"Now this is just sad."

Boles freezes in his position on the ground. He looks around in every direction, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. He's looking every direction except up, they never look up.

Jason can't help but grin as he continues. "What happened to the big man on the island? I mean come _on_ , everytime you beat me bloody all you could talk about was how you were the best guard in Arkham. Sure, I alway knew you were a coward getting off on the scraps of power Joker gave you, but this..."

Jason drops down from his vantage point and lands a few feet from the guard.

"This is just pathetic."

Boles' eyes go wide with recognition. "You!" He jerks back, trying to scramble to his feet only to fail miserably and collapse in a heap.

Jason doesn't even try to hide his amusement at Boles' feeble attempts to get away.

"You know, I never thought much of those leg breakers, but you gotta admit they do live up to their name," he muses as he walks towards the downed guard. "They sure did a number on you. Lots of blunt force damage, multiple cracked ribs, punctured lung from the sound of it, a few broken bones, cracked skull..."

"And yet they still didn't finish you off." Jason grabs Boles by the front of his uniform and hauls the guard to his feet. "Guess I have to finish the job."

Boles struggles against his hold, broken fingers clawing uselessly at Jason's wrists as he tries to breathe past the blood filling his lungs.

"Oh, save your breath. I've got a minute until Joker's goons finish securing the upper level and move to secure this room and another three until Batman gets here and wipes the floor with them." Jason's hands tighten around Boles' neck. "See, if you had just kept your hands to yourself maybe I would have left you for the Bat… maybe."

Boles' neck gives with a sickening crack. Jason feels a wave of satisfaction as he lets Boles lifeless body fall to the ground. God- _damn_ that was a long time coming. Three down and eight to go.

The sounds of the lobby doors opening breaks him out of his thoughts. Joker's goons are moving into the room, time to get gone.

Jason grapples back up to the gargoyles that surround the room and pries open the window, slipping onto the roof of the Intensive Treatment ward and into the cool night air.

 _Fresh air_. He hasn't breathed in anything but stale, damp, blood-soaked air since the Bats had left him to rot in Arkham. Jason rests against the wall as _clear_ air swirls through his lungs. He's getting light-headed, but he doesn't care. He's out, he made it out of that cell. He stares up at the moon. A part of him thought he would die in there without ever seeing the sky again. He actually made it out.

The relief is so overwhelming, so all consuming, that he doesn't realize that he stopped breathing until his knees hit the ground and his body begins to shake from lack of oxygen.

Trick, it's a trick, it's _always_ a trick. This isn't _real_. Just another hallucination, or dream. The result of the cocktail of drugs still in his system. How could he have gotten so caught up in it? How could he have dropped his guard like that? It's just going to make getting through the next day borderline impossible when he wakes up and he's still in that cell. God, he's still in that cell. The thought was almost unbearable.

He unsheathes his knife and puts the blade against his throat.

Have to end this dream sequence now, get back to reality before this illusion of freedom gets him killed.

"He's here!"

Jason's eyes fly open as the sound of yelling and fighting floods his senses. He looks down at the knife in his hand. He'd almost…

Jason makes a noise of disgust before stowing his knife. He actually made it onto the grounds only to think that it's all another drug induced hallucination and almost kill himself. Typical. If Harley didn't have a hand in programming that suggestion in his head, he'd buy flowers from Ivy. He carefully creeps along the roof until he's overlooking the entrance to the Intensive Treatment building.

Looks like the Joker had sent his goons to trash the Batmobile and now they were getting curbstomped by…

Jason freezes, every fiber of his being screaming for him to run even as rage sung through his veins.

Batman.

He steps back from the edge, dropping to his stomach and crawls forward until he can just see over the edge of the roof.

He watches as Batman dispatches the last of Joker's men with ease. There's not so much as a scratch on him. Bastard.

A year ago Jason would have jumped down there and confronted him. He would have yelled and raged at him for throwing him in this mad house, for giving him to the Joker on a silver platter. He probably have started some epic showdown that would have resulted in him back behind bars once again.

Back then it would have been worth it, any amount of pain he inflicted on _any_ of them was worth it. Now? No amount pain he could possibly inflict on Bruce is worth going back to that cell. Back to the Joker. He didn't survive everything they had put him through _and_ make it this far just to jeopardise his chances of escape. The only chance he has of making it off Arkham is if he remains undetected. He isn't anywhere close to fighting strength as months of torture have taken their toll. He has to pick his battles and pick them well. He can only interfere when he's certain that he won't be discovered. There's no margin for error.

Huh, so a year under Arkham managed to teach him patience and discipline when three years following Bruce around couldn't. It's ironic on so many levels he doesn't know where to begin.

Jason watches Batman collect something out of the batmobile, some gadget or other, and head into Arkham West. He's probably tracking Gordon's trail, straight to the Medical Center if what he overheard from Harley was correct. Not going there, then.

Jason runs through his options. He wants to get off this island and back to Gotham as soon as possible. The more time he spends here, the greater the chance he will be discovered by either Batman or Joker, and he really doesn't know which of those possibilities is worse. On the other hand, Arkham is on lockdown. Joker has control of Arkham North and is working to take over Arkham West from the sound of it. As long as Arkham is contested, no one is going to be able to get on or off the island. His best option is probably to wait until whatever plan the Joker's got going comes to a head and slip away while the GCPD retakes Arkham.

The only question is what should he do until then? He can't actively undermine Joker without risking a run in with Batman so that's out, keeping away from both men is his first priority. Hunting down the rest of the guards on his list is tempting, but unless he's handed the perfect chance to kill one of them like with Boles, he's not going to go out of his way. There's too many ways for things to go wrong and be seen, and as appealing as sitting on his hands sounds, he needs to keep moving. He has less of a chance of getting caught that way.

 _Alright Todd, you've got half of Arkham to run around and no one knows you're here. What do you do?_

 _Burn my file._

Jason nearly drops the knife he'd been spinning through his fingers. His file. The file that Harley had been using to tear apart his mind with for the last year. The file that Bruce gave them. The file that is currently sitting in the Arkham Mansion records room in Arkham East and completely removed from whatever the clown's planning, at least for now.

Burning his file won't repair the damage they've done to him, but it'll be one hell of a start. Employee records are stored in the mansion as well. If he can find the files for the guards on Joker's payroll, it will make tracking them down outside of Arkham that much easier.

And if an opportunity to anonymously throw a wrench into Joker's big plan just happened to fall into his lap...

He'll bring it crashing down around him.

 _This is going to be fun._


	5. Eye of the Storm

Jason turns his file over in his hands. Getting through Arkham East and into the Arkham Mansion was easier than he thought, even with Arkham East still being under staff control. Are all the windows in Arkham unlocked? Idiots.

He flips open his file and starts scanning the first page.

Name: Unknown.

 _More like inconvenient._

Alias: Red-Hood.

 _There's no hyphen, morons._

Status: Escaped.

 _Working on it._

Abilities: No meta human abilities recorded.

 _Does coming back from the dead count?_

Diagnosis: PTSD.

 _You don't fucking say._

Recommended action: As the patient shows no signs of being criminally insane or of having any mental illness that would warrant involuntary commitment, it is recommend that the patient be transferred to Blackgate.

 _And there it is._

Jason grinds his teeth as those cleanly inked words stare back at him. That psych eval was dated the same _week_ he had been brought to Arkham. If it had ever been passed up the chain, he probably would have been transferred to Blackgate within 24 hours _._ Maximum security in Blackgate wouldn't have been pretty, but dealing with Black Mask and the other crime bosses he'd taken down during the Red Hood's rise to power would have been a hell of a lot easier than the Joker and his _games._

He scans through the rest of his file. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to tip anyone off to what's really going on in Arkham. Everything was in place down to the signature on his eval...

His mind stutters to a stop as he reads the signature at the bottom of the page.

Abby Atwood

All at once fragments of memory begin to surface.

 _Hey, Hey! Look at me!_

 _Just hang in there, I'm getting you out of here._

 _I have to do something, I can't just turn my back._

 _I'm not leaving you here._

 _When you get out of here find me!_

Jason's hand flies out to catch himself against the file cabinet as his mind stutters to a stop.

She's real!?

* * *

"Hey, hey! Look at me!"

Jason could feel the touch of warmth on his face through the haze of drugs and pain. It took him a moment to recognize the warmth as a hand tilting his face up. Tactile hallucinations, huh? That's new.

"Just hang in there, I'm getting you out of here."

Something in the voice had him fighting to focus his eyes on the source. A part of him didn't care to deal with whatever illusion his drug fogged mind had cooked up, but curiosity won out in the end.

His eyes finally focused on the form kneeling over him. It was a young woman, mid twenties. A small part of his mind flashed her appearance into memory out of habit. About 5'5", dark brown hair pulled up into a bun, and light brown, almost golden, eyes are focused on the chains that hold him to the wall. The Arkham issued lab coat made her easy to identify as one of the psychiatric interns. His eyes landed on the badge on the pocket of her lab coat, Abby Atwood. A part of him thought she looked familiar but he just couldn't place her.

"You're new," His words came out slurred and halted. "Haven't seen anything this vivid in a while. Quinn must have upped the dose again."

She stopped working at the chains and turned her attention back to him.

"You think I'm a hallucination." It wasn't a question.

Jason couldn't help but scoff at that. "Of course you're a hallucination, why else would I be seeing you? The only people who come down here are Joker, Harley, or one of their lackeys. Anything else is something my mind cooked up to fuck with me."

"So everything you see that isn't Joker, Harley Quinn, a guard, or orderly is a hallucination that taunts you or hurts you?"

He shrugged the best he could considering that he hadn't been able to feel his shoulders since the last time Joker had used him as a pinata. "Pretty much." He said letting himself sag back against the chains, most of his energy used up by the short conversation.

She placed her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look directly at her. "Then why are you seeing me?"

Jason's drugged mind spun for a few seconds before it dawned on him.

"You're not a hallucination."

"I'm not a hallucination."

"Then what are you doing here!" He demanded, becoming more lucid now that there was something to focus on. "Do you have any idea what Joker will do to you if he finds you?"

She pulled back to glare at him. "Kill me in a horrific and sick way? I've worked here for almost a year now. I've seen what he does to people, I know what i'm risking."

Jason almost laughed at that. "No, you don't. You really don't."

She reached out and took his head in her hands again. "You're right, I don't know. I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I'll be damned if I just leave you here to suffer like this."

He pulled away from her. "You can't save me, just get out of here. Get back to your shift before someone notices you're missing and forget what you saw."

Her eyes narrowed at that. "Like hell I will! I have to do _something_ , I can't just turn my back."

It had to be the one person in Arkham with a _concious_ that found him, Christ.

"You want to do something? Start cleaning up Arkham?" Jason asked. "Alright, fine. Here's what you do. You turn around and walk out of that door, you go back to your station and get back to work. When something happens, when you see or hear something, you remember it. You go home and you write it down, you write down everything you remember. Every bit of evidence you have or know of or what you suspect happened and why. Put it all in a folder and hide it away. You don't speak up, you just listen and keep your head down, stay anonymous. Keep your eyes open, your mouth shut and you don't give that file to anyone but the Batman. Got it?

She nodded, clearly turning everything over in her head. She reached out and took his hand.

"What about you?"

"There's no saving me, I was doomed the day the Bat brought me here. Just focus on finding every speck of dirt upstarts. Don't waste your time trying to save a dead man."

Her hands tightened around his. "I am not leaving you here."

He pulled his wrist out of her grip. If he didn't get her out of his cell soon she'd be caught. He was running out of time. "You have to," he growled, "I'm useless in this state, you _cannot_ rescue me. The only way I am getting out of here is if I wait for my moment and get very, _very_ lucky. There's no other way. You have to go. If you die down here who's going to blow the whistle on Arkham? You'll have thrown away your life for nothing and nothing will change!"

She closed her eyes and brought her hand to the Star of David she wore around her neck, clutching it tight. "Damn it," she whispered before rising to her feet.

"When you get out of here, find me!" she ordered, before wrenching the door to his cell shut behind her.

He could hear the sound of her footsteps moving away, and then nothing. The haze that he had managed to fight off rose once again.

The next time Jason woke, he didn't remember her at all.

* * *

Everything snaps back into focus. Jason stares at that signature like his life depends on it.

Abby… Abby Atwood. Of course he thought she looked familiar, she did his psych eval when he first got to Arkham! How could he have forgotten her?

He drops his file and starts digging through the employee files.

Atwood.. Atwood... Christ, who sorted these files? Nigma?

After a few minutes of searching, his eyes finally land on her file. He pulls it out and starts reading.

Abigail Atwood: psychiatric intern under Dr. Young for the past year and a half. No disciplinary marks against her or anything else of note. Looks like she's been keeping a low profile during her shifts…

His eyes lands on her schedule.

"Wait a minute," he breathes, before spinning to look at the innocuous looking calendar in the corner of the room. The dates match, she's on the night shift tonight… She's here on the island right now!

Jason spins back around, shoving the file back where he found it before picking up his own and placing it back, his previous mission abandoned with the discovery of this new information. As his body covers his tracks his mind rockets ahead.

She's scheduled to be in the penitentiary tonight, if he sticks to the rooftops he should make it to Arkham West without much… His hand froze on the window sill. Arkham West: the visitor's center, the penitentiary, and the medical center. Where Batman is, right now.

 _My whole escape depends on avoiding Batman, am I really going to risk everything to save someone I don't even know?_

Jason lets out a huff. "Is that even a question?" he asks the open air as he grapples up to the roof and takes off running into the night.

* * *

"There she is! Someone grab her!"

Abby fights back a scream as she is dragged out from under the broken-down ambulance. She finds herself face to face with a grinning inmate with another twisting her arms behind her back.

"Hah, told you we'd find her. Throw her in with the other doctors we found."

"What? She's no doctor man, she's an In-turn."

"The hell's an In-turn?"

"Don't know, I just know she's no doctor."

"Oh really…" The lead inmate's grin gets wider. "In that case-"

CRACK! Abby feels the grip on her arms go slack and fall away. The inmate in front of her takes a step back, eyes widening with horror as he stares over her shoulder.

"The hell are you?!"

"A ghost."

Abby freezes at the voice behind her.

 _Don't waste your time trying to save a dead man._

Before she can react she is shoved out of the way of the now charging inmate.

She hits the ground and rolls to her feet just in time to see a figure in an old Arkham inmate jumpsuit snap the neck of her assailant like it was nothing, before letting the body fall to the ground.

Her heart leaps into her throat as her eyes land on the J-shaped brand on his face.

"You're free," she whispers.

Before she can get another word out he wraps an arm around her and the next thing she knows they are flying.

Seconds later their feet hit the roof of the medical center. Abby has just enough time to shake off the vertigo before her rescuer collapses.

"Hey!" Abby yells as she throws her weight under his shoulder, just barely stopping his fall and letting him rest against her.

"M'fine," he mumbles.

She adjusts his arm around her shoulders, trying to take on more of his weight. "Sure you are. Come on, you need to sit down before you fall down."

It takes a bit of maneuvering, but finally Abby gets him propped up against one of the broken outcroppings that made up the roof of the medical building.

He had clearly lost more weight since she found him all those months ago, muscle atrophy as well from what little skin is exposed by the orange jumpsuit. He's running on will power and adrenaline. He shouldn't even be conscious right now.

"How did you escape?" she asks.

"Long story. What were you doing out in the open?" he responds, voice gaining some strength now that he was sitting down. "You were supposed to be in the penitentiary tonight."

She frowns at that. "The penitentiary was breached, I managed to make it out before I was spotted and tried to make it to the safe zone in the medical center. Better question is how did you know that? Or is it another long story?"

"Good guess." He gives her a weak grin before it dissolves into a coughing fit.

She wraps her arms around him and holds him steady as his body shakes violently. When it finally finishes, he pulls his hand away from his mouth. It's stained red.

"Well, shit." He stares at his hand. "Guess I really over did it."

"Is this is the first time you've coughed up blood after you got out of your cell?" she asks as she examines his hand.

He nods. "Yeah, why?"

"With the combination drugs they've been feeding you, I'm surprised hemoptysis didn't occur the second you started moving around. Blood thinning is a known side effect of over half of the drugs in your system. Factor in the damage you've taken in the last year, and any stress on your body could lead to excessive bleeding. Until you get your system flushed, any hit you take could lead to you bleeding out."

"Well that's just great." He lets his head fall back against the wall behind him. "How the hell do you know what they're giving me anyway?"

"Because I've been diluting the doses with placebos."

His head snaps up. "You've been doing what?!" he demands only to stop short as the sounds of battle force them to flatten themselves to the roof.

* * *

"I will break you, Batman. Then the bruja!" Bane roars, giant hands lifting Batman off the ground.

"No, Bane. This time I break you!" Batman growls as the Batmobile busts through the doors to Arkham North and plows into the oversized luchador, sending him into Gotham Bay.

Batman slowly gets to his feet, wrenching his dislocated shoulder back into place as he watches the spot where Bane and the Batmobile had disappeared into the water.

A short while later he escorts Gordon back to the dock where a GCPD police boat is waiting.

"Jim, get back to the mainland. It's too dangerous here."

"I don't like leaving you here." Gordon says before climbing into the police boat.

"The radio claims he's planted bombs all over Gotham. Gotham will panic, you're needed there."

"We're ready to go now, sir," says an officer behind the commissioner.

Gordon turns back to Batman as the boat begins to pull away. "Bane called Dr. Young 'bruja.' What does it mean?"

"It's Spanish. Means witch," he says as he walks back towards Arkham.

Time to find out what Dr. Young is trying to hide, and why Joker wants it, before it's too late.

* * *

Jason can't breathe.

Batman's voice keeps ringing through his head, causing his brain to short circuit. This was different than seeing him from a distance, or even hearing his voice over the coms. This was too close, too real and the fear stole the breath from his lungs.

Batman is coming for him, coming to take him back to the Joker. He has to get away, but he can't. Batman will find him, he always finds him. There's no escape.

He feels his hand wrap around the hilt of his knife. _He can't take me back if I'm dead._

He tries to raise the knife to his throat but he feels resistance, something is stopping him. He looks down at his hand only to see another hand wrapped around his.

"Hood."

His head snaps up and he finds himself face to face with Abby.

"Hood, you need to breathe." Her voice is perfectly calm. Not the cooing wounded animal voice that Dick was so fond of. Not a growled order to calm down that he had heard from Bruce a million times. She was calm, in control.

Just like Talia.

Jason feels himself take a shaky breath, then another. It takes him about about twenty more breaths before his heart rate begins to slow and the weight in his hand starts to register.

He makes a noise of disgust, dropping the knife, and resting his forehead against the gravel roof where they were both laying.

He feels Abby rise up slightly so she can see over the edge of the building.

"He's gone," she says, lowering herself back down and finally releasing his hand.

"Good," Jason says weakly, voice muffled by the gravel.

"That happen often?" she asks carefully.

Jason lets out a sigh. "Second time tonight."

Abby makes a soft sound of understanding, but does not comment further. Instead, she wraps an arm around him and helps him to his feet.

Jason mentally shakes himself. He needs to get her out of the line of fire and soon. There's no way he can keep her safe in this state. "You said that there is a safe zone inside of the medical center, how do you know that?"

"Dr. Young told me about it when I ran into her and Officer Cash while I was trying to find a place to hide," she says, not commenting on the sudden change of topic. "Apparently, Batman cleared out the medical center and created a safe zone in Patient Observation."

Jason tries not to react to the mention of Batman's name. Judging from the look on Abby's face, he didn't succeed.

"Alright, that's probably your best bet if you want to stay safe." He starts to move towards the edge of the roof. "I can get you there but we need to move fast if we want to avoid detection."

"Hood wait! I know what Joker wants."

He spins around. "What?"

"I know what Joker wants," she repeats. "I had my suspicions when the island went into lockdown but Dr. Young confirmed it when she and Officer Cash told me about the safe zone. Dr. Young's been working on a secret project that only a handful of Arkham personal know about called Project Titan. She was trying to create a way to strengthen the body so patients could survive the more strenuous "treatments" that she was pioneering. Her experiments were being bankrolled by one Jack White."

"Joker," Jason growls.

"Yeah, of course once Dr. Young realized who was funding her she tried to back out. I managed to catch a glimpse of some of the emails he sent her after that. He said that he wanted what he paid for and that he'd get it one way or another. She thinks that he's going to try to find her notes, so she and Officer Cash are heading to the Mansion to destroy them before Joker can get his hands on them."

"I'm going to guess that Project Titan does a lot more than just boosting the immune system."

"I don't know what Titan does, she never told me. All I know is that the project is big and Dr. Young has Warden Sharp's full support. He had Bane broken out of Blackgate and brought here to a secret lab under the medical center. Once he became patient zero her research took off. I don't know what she showed Sharp, but he had a secret lab built for her in the gardens so she could further her research. He may be a coward in love with his position, but someone's backing him and they have power. Don't ask me who they are or what they want, but I must admit they found the perfect puppet."

She shakes her head. "That's all I know about what's going down tonight. What are you going to do now?"

"Good question." Jason sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

Whatever Titan is, Joker wants it, and that immediately makes it dangerous. Especially when he's gone to these lengths to get it, and with Bane being the cornerstone of the project? She had to be studying the venom in his blood. If Joker gets his hands on _anything_ related to venom, it's going to be bad. Damn, he can't leave until he knows how big of a threat this is.

"Look," Abby says, drawing his attention again. "You don't have to tell me what your plan is, or if you even have one. Just remember that you can come find me once you get off the island and I'll keep you hidden. I know that you don't fully trust me yet," she says, waving off his immediate protests. "And you have no reason to, but remember that it is an option if you have nowhere else to go, alright?"

God, he _really_ doesn't want to take her up on that offer, but the chances that his safe houses aren't compromised after a year of sitting empty are nil. Staying with her is probably his best bet, but the danger he'd put her in...

"You sure you want to risk sheltering a violent criminal? Could be dangerous."

She gives him an unimpressed look. "I work at _Arkham_ , Hood."

Well, when you put it that way...

* * *

"Abby!"

"Oh, thank God! You're safe!"

"Here, grab my hand!"

Jason watches from his perch as the handful of doctors and officers who had been holed up in Patient Observation help Abby climb over the barricade. One of the doctors immediately starts checking her over. The relief in the room is palatable, another one of them was safe. They had hope, at least for now.

Jason lets out the breath he didn't know he was holding. Abby's safe, or at least as safe as she can be with Joker in control of the island. Time to get a move on.

It doesn't take Jason long to find himself in the bowels of the medical center. He creeps along the corridors, cursing the lack of vents.

He reaches the door marked Experimental Chamber, when another door bursts open behind him and one of Joker's goons lunges out at him.

Jason immediately dodges out of the way, preparing to counter only to watch as the inmate swung wildly around at open air. He doesn't even register Jason.

Jason watches Joker's goons run around, clawing at their eyes, trying to fight off imaginary opponents, then it hit him.

The corridor is filled with fear toxin, Jason watches as the sickly yellow vapor filters in from the vents and wafts through the room. He braces himself for the inevitable hallucinations, the adrenaline rush, the _fear_. Only it never comes.

Jason is standing in the middle of a room flooded with fear toxin, and it does nothing to him. No fear response, no paranoia, no moving shadows out of the corner of his eyes, nothing.

Scarecrow's fear toxin has absolutely no effect on him.

Jason feels something bubbling up in his chest. At first his laughter is foreign to his own ears. Hollow and shaky, it borders on hysterical as it echoes down the halls.

His knees hit the ground as he doubles over.

He doesn't know how long he laughs but eventually he slows and staggers to his feet.

His hand shoots out and catches a wild swing from one of the crazed inmates who just stares at him in horror.

Jason looks into the clown-painted face.

"You don't scare me."


	6. Nothing to lose and everything to win

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Jason stares at the monitor in Bane's cell. Getting in wasn't a problem since Abby gave him Dr. Young's password before they parted ways. It was what the good doctor had created that was the problem.

Jason pinches the bridge of his nose. Titan is Venom on _steroids_ , no need to lug around a storage tank. 12 CCs of venom and you'll transform into a lumbering mass of muscle, permanently. Even better, she had created gallons of the stuff for testing, all hidden away in that secret lab in the gardens. Even if Joker doesn't get his hands on the formula, what's already been created will be more than enough to destroy Gotham multiple times over.

He can't leave, not until he is sure that the threat is neutralized. Which, judging by the com chatter between Oracle and Batman, is exactly what Batman is trying to do by running around The Arkham mansion looking for the Doctor's notes. That puts the two of them on one hell of a collision course.

He could leave stopping Joker's plot to Batman. A year ago he would have been off the island already. A year ago he would have trusted B to turn over every rock and clown-themed henchman, to discover every angle, every hidden scheme at the _slightest_ hint that something wasn't adding up. To be Batman...

He's not that naive anymore. If you want a ton of monster-creating chemicals blown up right, you do it yourself.

* * *

"Help me!"

Dr. Young's screams echo down the hall. "Please, someone. Help!"

"Come any closer and I cut her throat, Batman." Zsasz's threat cutting through the doctor's cries as he drags her back into the Warden's office.

Batman creeps down the hallway towards the office, keeping well out of Zsasz's sightlines. If he times this even a second wrong Zsasz will make good on his threat.

Joker's voice comes on over the PA system. "Well, well, well. What do we have here? Our own psychotic tally board cornered by the Bat himself."

Dr. Young makes a muffled sound of horror at Joker's voice.

"Come on Zsasz, what are you waiting for? Just kill her, you know you want to."

"But If I kill her now Batman will get me!" Zsasz's voice is shaking now. Caught between the desire to kill and the fear of being caught.

"Really Zsasz, is that what you're worried about? I'm surprised you can even feel worry when you have a knife to her throat."

Batman creeps closer. The more Zsasz is distracted the easier it will be to disable him, but he'll have to move fast.

"I mean can't you smell her fear, the delicious blood running through her veins just begging to be spilled? You know what you have to do."

Zsasz stops shaking, the compulsion taking over completely.

"Good night Ms. Young-"

The Batarang hits Zsasz square in the temple. Knocking him unconscious.

Dr. Young screams as she is released, frantically trying to get as far away from Zsasz as possible.

Batman exits his hiding place. Now that the Doctor is safe he might finally get some answers.

* * *

"Bingo." Jason grins as he pulls back the tarp to reveal cases of Titan hidden among the rocks on the cliffs.

It only took listening in on a few conversations to learn that Joker had ordered the guards on his payroll to smuggle crates of Titan out of Young's lab in the weeks before the attack and hide them in the cliffs along the south side of the island. A reserve to smuggle off the island after the incident if whatever Joker had planned goes sideways.

Joker's won't risk monitoring the stash, not if it means that Batman might discover and track the surveillance. On the other hand, Batman would have no reason to search the cliffs if there was no activity there. There's no reason for anyone else to scale the cliffs, no one will be looking for him here.

Jason quickly gets to work cracking open the crates and studying the contents inside. If the information he pulled off the terminal in Bane's cell is correct, Titan should burn easily. Just like burning off an oil spill.

Jason pulls out a lighter he picked up off Tad's body and lit the crate up. It burns faster than he thought it would, the Titan is gone in only a few minutes.

Jason kicks the now empty and smoldering crate into the bay below before turning to the rest of the crates.

Half an hour later all that's left of Joker's little Titan stash is slowly sinking its way to the bottom of Gotham Bay.

Jason puts the lighter away. Well, that takes care of that. Now to get back topside and see what's-

"There you are."

Pain explodes up Jason's side as the knife slides between his ribs.

 _Stupid._

Jason's mind skips past the pain. Not fatal, missed vital spots.

 _Careless._

The knife rips from him. Jason's hand flies to his side to slow the bleeding.

 _You're on an island of psychopaths, you drop your guard and you're dead._

Jason grits his teeth as he spins around.

 _Shut up, Bruce!_

Jason shoves the unwanted commentary to the back of his mind as the shadowy figure advances on him.

Good news, it's not Joker. Bad news, it's Zsasz.

Blood is slowly seeping through Jason's fingers. It's not a serious hit, but it could have been. With his guard down and his back turned, Zsasz could have killed him easily. The only thing that saved him was that Zsasz prefers to kill his victims slowly. He's not going to risk them bleeding out before he's done with them.

Left alive to be tortured by a madman. Jason's sensing a pattern here.

Zsasz advances on him, bloodstained knife gleaming in the moonlight.

"Batman wouldn't let me kill her." Zsasz speech is halted and desperate. Like a junkie who's been denied his fix. Only to have just stumbled across a stray needle just when all seemed lost.

"Knocked me out, and when I woke up she was dead, gone. Joker killed her, he said I could kill her after he got the formula but he killed her..."

Jason's mind puts two and two as Zsasz movements got more and more erratic. Doctor Young is dead and Joker has Titan. Great.

"Not my kill, not my mark, not my kill, not my mark. No mark. I have to make the mark!"

Zsasz lunges forward.

Even with Zsasz shaking like a leaf, Jason can barely deflect the blow in time. With Jason battling the results of a year of torture and Zsasz's compulsion taking over it's hard to tell who's in worse shape.

The knife slicing open a cut on Jason's arm answers that question. Zsasz isn't just some goon. He can go toe to toe with Batman on his best day and has come close to killing him more than once. Either this fight ends quickly or Jason going to be just another tally carved into that monster's skin.

Jason's back hits the wall and he realizes a second too late that's he's boxed himself in.

Zsasz realizes the same thing as the skilled fighting stance dissolves and he lunges forward, knife raised. All sense of restraint lost.

"Die zombie!"

Zsasz's forearm slams into Jason's, the knife stopping just centimeters from Jason's eye.

"You first."

Jason's hand wraps around Zsasz's and drives the knife up into the soft flesh under Zsasz's jaw, through the roof of his mouth and right into his brain.

The light leaves Zsasz's eyes. His face going slack and the body falls backward off the ledge and disappears into the water below.

Jason slumps against the wall and watches the blood run down his arm. The cut on his forearm wasn't deep, it was just a graze. It should start to slow...

 _Blood thinning is a known side effect of over half of the drugs in your system._

A surge of panic hits Jason as Abby's words echo through his head.

"No." Jason breathes.

 _Any hit you take could lead to you bleeding out._

Jason's brain short circuits. NO!

How much blood has he lost? His jumpsuit was already stained red.

Jason slides to the ground, pressing both hands to the wound.

It wasn't stopping. It hasn't slowed at all

 _I'm going to die._

He can see those red numbers counting down again. _Tick, tick, tick. Boom!_

Jason grinds his teeth together. _No. Not. Again. I didn't crawl out of that hole just to die again. Now think!_

Jason closes his eyes and runs through everything he knows about stab wounds.

Bandaging up the wound won't work, it would just bleed through. A tourniquet won't work on a chest wound. Cauterizing it is the only option.

Jason pulls a knife out of his boot while keeping his other hand tight to his side. Now he just needs something to heat the metal.

A gleam of light catches Jason's eye from between the rocks. The lighter! He must have lost it when he was grappling with Zsasz.

Jason sets the knife aside and stretches to pull the lighter from its place between the rocks. The fresh gush of blood at the movement coats his hand bright red.

He glances down at his side, he can't risk pulling his other hand away from the wound to hold the knife…

Trying to move as little as possible, Jason pushes two nearby rocks together with the lit lighter held between them.

He runs the knife over the flame as blood pulses through his fingers to the beat of his heart.

The hand that holds the knife hovers by his side. He can feel the heat radiating from the metal on the hand covering the wound. It's now or never.

 _Quick taps, don't burn away healthy tissue. You can do this._

He pulls his hand away.

The heated metal makes contact and all he can hear is laughter.

 _He's curled up on the ground in that dirty dank cell. The smell of burnt flesh chokes him even as the pain begins to slowly marked him, branded him. The letter 'J' has been burned into the skin of his cheek and he feels dirty in a way he hasn't felt in years. The worst part? This isn't even about him! It's about Batman, about Joker's desire to hurt Batman. As far as Joker's concerned, all Jason is a tool to be used. A weapon to be forged, deployed and discarded. He's done so much damage to Joker's operation, messed with his plans, beat him to a pulp more than one and this isn't revenge for any of that. It's just about Batman, always about Batman._

 _I'm nothing._

The knife clatters out of Jason's hand and he lets his rigid posture slump more heavily against the cliff face. Tentative fingers probe the burnt red flesh. A hiss escapes him as the pain flares briefly, but the bleeding has stopped.

Shaky fingers reach up and trace the brand.

 _You're finally getting it Bird Boy! You are nothing. Just a blank slate now. You're mine now, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine._

 _We are going to have so much fun together._

The sound of an engine breaks Jason out of the memory. The surprise turns to pure adrenaline because he knows that sound!

Jason rolls into a nearby alcove as the Batwing roars overhead, heading into the Island's airspace.

Jason presses himself to the ground. He knows what kind of sensors are on that thing. Just as good as the Batmobile and just as hard to avoid. If that thing spots him and someone's in the cockpit his escape plan is as good as finished.

After a minute of silence, the engines pick up again. This time moving away as the craft roars out over the bay and disappears from view.

Jason lets out the breath he was holding. Seriously!? He shoves himself up into a sitting position. First, he's ambushed by Zsasz, then he had to perform a cauterization on himself, and to top it off the batwing just flew over which could be bringing more Bats for him to avoid. How much can go wrong in the same half hour?

Just as he gets to his feet the ground begins to shake.

Jason throws his hands up and glares at the sky. "That was a rhetorical question you- You know what, forget it. Do your worst. I don't care."

He grapples up against the cliff face just as the ledge he had been standing on plummets into the water below.

He scales the rocky outcroppings until he finally reaches Arkham West.

Jason's feet hit the roof of the medical center just in time to watch giant plants rise out of the ground wrap around everything in sight. The buildings are quickly covered in vines and the grounds are now covered in spores. He watches an unfortunate inmate get snapped up by a giant venus flytrap and another getting bisected by a vine as their buddies run for cover. After a few moments the shaking stops, leaving the island covered in green.

Jason kneels down next to a vine that had just missed him as it wrapped around a broken outcropping on the roof. He watches as a sickly, Titan green runs through the veins of the plant.

Jason sighs as he rises to his feet. So, Ivy is free, and apparently infected with Titan… Typical.

The grounds are completely covered in carnivorous plants. Getting from point A to point B on the island just got much more challenging. At least the inmates are running for cover, anyone with half a brain cell would know to stay the hell away from…

Jason watches in disbelief as Warden Sharp creeps out of the penitentiary.

"What the hell?" Jason says under his breath as he tracks Sharp's progress. The Warden winding his way across a literal minefield of killer plants and psychos with a fearless single-minded determination Jason didn't think Arkham's spineless overseer was capable of.

Why would Sharp, a complete coward, be moving around on his own in the middle of a war zone? Especially now that it was covered in poison spores and raving madmen? He should be cowering in whatever corner Batman left him in after being rescued from Harley Quinn. What is going on?

Only one way to find out.

* * *

"BATMAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" Croc roars as he charges towards him. Just as the animal is bearing down on him, Batman triggers the explosives he had planted. Sending Croc falling into down into the depths of the tunnels.

With the threat neutralized, Batman turns to the vial of spores he had collected from the monster's lair.

With luck, he'll be able to synthesize enough antidote to end Ivy's control of the island and stop Joker before any more lives are lost.

* * *

"Arkham City, huh?"

Sharp makes a noise somewhere between a whimper and a groan from where he's cowering on the ground.

Jason continues to pace around the hidden room in Sharp's office, examining the maps on the walls. He didn't know what he was expecting to find when he followed Sharp back to the mansion, but a secret room with plans for a super prison right in the middle of Gotham? That was a new one.

"There's no way you thought this up all by yourself. Don't get me wrong, you're definitely callous enough to think nothing of evicting about, what? A thousand people from their homes and destroying every small business that managed to gain a foothold in the Bowery just to give your little bid for mayor a boost from your high society friends."

Sharp tries to inch toward the door but one look from Jason sends him cowering back into a corner.

"As I was saying, you didn't think up this powder keg all by yourself. Someone's pulling your strings, and I'll bet there's someone behind them with the resources to push your campaign through. Hell, I bet that mayoral campaign wasn't really your idea either. I doubt you've ever had an original thought in your head _Mr. Spirit of Amadeus Arkham_."

Sharp jumps, sputtering out weak dismissals which Jason ignores.

"Oh, don't even try to deny it. You got your mind overwritten by a bunch of old writings from a mad-man and started fantasizing about offing the inmates. Only you never went through with it because the only genuine part of you is a coward. A coward who hides behind his old money name while sneering down at the inmates when in reality you're just as sick and twisted as they are."

Jason pulls the plans off the wall, dropping it on the desk with the other blueprints and pulls out the lighter, setting the plans on fire.

He plucks a gilded letter opener off the now burning desk, spinning it around in his hand as he looms over Sharp's terrified form.

"If I could figure out your writings then Batman _definitely_ will and once he's found all of them he'll come after you. Oh sure, the people pulling your strings could probably cover this up, set you up as the hero of the day, push through your campaign, and break ground on that human's rights lawsuit waiting to happen without Batman being able to do a damn thing about it. I mean what could he do? What could anyone do? Kill you?"

"Then again..."Jason grabs Sharp by the collar and hauls him to his feet. "I'm no Batman."

"You wanted a Legacy, to be remembered as the man who cured Gotham. Looks like you're going down in history as the coward who slit his wrists in shame after he was revealed to be just as crazy as the super-criminals he hated so much." Jason remarks as he carves bloody lines down Sharp's forearms.

"Hey, you get points for trying... No you don't. You get dead."

Jason let Sharp's body fall to the ground with an undignified thump seconds before another round of tremors rocked the island. Only this time it feels different, like something was dying.

Jason climbs out the window and grapples up to the roof of the mansion. He watches as Ivy's plants begin to collapse in on themselves as bat-shaped fireworks explode in the air above Arkham West.

The PA system crackles to life and Joker's voice echoes across the grounds.

"Batman! I know it's been a long, hard night, but good news! The party is about to start! We've got something for everyone! Music, dancing, chemicals that create monsters! You don't want to miss it. So get your ass over to the Cell Block, or you'll miss your final surprise!"

Jason leans against the wall of the clock tower and watches the lights dance above the island. So Joker's master plan is coming to a head, huh? That's his cue to get gone. Only question is, how? The only dock on Arkham island is in Arkham West, and there's no way he's going within a hundred feet of whatever showdown Joker has planned. Swimming back sure as hell isn't an option with the state he's in. He's been skating by on adrenaline, willpower, and one hell of an endorphin rush all night but it's not going to last much longer. What he really needs is a boat.

Jason grapples up to the top of the clocktower, pulls out his binoculars and starts scanning the bay.

None of the police boats were coming anywhere near the island and there wasn't a single commercial ship in sight, the only ship that was anywhere near the island was…

"Oh, you've _got_ to be kidding me." Jason grumbles under his breath as he watches a boat full of Joker's goons and one tied up police commissioner dock at Arkham island. How the Hell did Gordon get captured again? The GCPD is in for one Hell of a shakedown after tonight. Not that it's going to change anything.

After transferring their prisoner to the inmates waiting at the docks the boat travels south before coming to a stop around the cliffs at deadman's point. Probably part of Joker's escape plan.

Jason grins. Not if he has anything to say about it.

* * *

Batman watches as a venom enhanced Joker drags himself out of a hole in the center of the giant arena they'd been fighting in.

"I can take it. I can take anything you throw at me, Bats. You can't beat me. I'm actually going to win!" Joker proclaims standing tall. "Ready for the next round?"

Batman squares his shoulders as the clown looms over him. "Always."

Joker's face twists with rage. "What?"

"I'll never let you win!"

Joker lunges forward with a roar.

Images flash through his mind as Joker charges him.

The dead guards that lie scattered all over Arkham.

The hundreds dead at his hands.

Every last scar that had been inflicted on his children.

Barbara lying in that hospital bed.

Jason's lifeless body in his arms.

"Never!" He roars slamming his fist into Joker's face. The impact triggers the explosive foam on his glove, sending the clown flying backward. He slams into the electric fence of the makeshift ring.

Batman struggles to his feet holding his broken arm just as the clown collapses to the ground, broken and defeated.

It's over.

* * *

Jason watches as a veritable fleet of news choppers circle Arkham island. Looks like he got out just in time. He steers his boat full of unconscious/dead goons away from Arkham and on a direct course for Gotham. Once he makes it out of the bay and into the city's waterways he can abandon the boat and let it crash it into one of the bridge supports. Then once he's in the city he can go to ground and pass out for a good 24 hours.

Jason slows the boat to a stop at the edge of Gotham bay and started searching the dead/unconscious bodies for clothes that would fit him. Walking around Gotham, even in the Bowery, in his Arkham jumpsuit would end with him behind bars before morning. Nothing brings the GCPD and the people of Crime alley together like an escaped Arkham inmate.

He pulls his newly acquired black hoodie over his head in time to see a crate of Titan floating by.

Jason sighs as he aims his grapple gun at the case. Didn't Batman destroy the Titan plant? How the hell did it even get off the island? He shakes his head as he pulls the case aboard. If this stuff gets into the Gotham underworld at any level it'll send the city into chaos in a matter of hours.

He hooks three flashbang grenades to the case, wiring them together before throwing the case back over the side. Those grenades might not pack the same punch as B's exploding foam but the three of them together should have enough kick to destroy the case and ignite the Titan inside.

Jason waits for the crate to float far enough away and triggered the charges. The case explodes in a flare of green, sending shock waves through the water and rocking the boat. He watches as the remains of the crate sunk to the bottom of the bay. Just as he was sure the Titan had been destroyed entirely another wave slams into the boat nearly capsizing it.

Jason lunges back from the side, drawing his guns just as Killer Croc surges out of the bay, landing on the deck of the boat with a thundering crash.

Croc raises his head with a snarl and lunges forward only to suddenly stop mid-lunge and take a step back.

Jason stood his ground warily, glaring at Croc as Croc watches him in return.

After what felt like hours the stare down ends abruptly as Croc bursts into laughter.

That laughter echoes off the water. Twisted, cruel, and amused.

"Something funny?" Jason asks coolly as he watches the creature descend into a fit of laughter.

Croc straightens from his crouch with a toothy grin stretching across his face. He didn't say a word. Just turns and dives back into the bay, disappearing into the depths.

A whimper from behind has him spinning around to see one of the goons looking back and forth between him and the side of the boat Croc had disappeared over with a look of complete incredulity.

"But… That was… How... Wha…?"

Jason shrugs at the goon's disbelieving stare as he levels his gun at his head. "It's an animal thing."

* * *

Barbra pulls up the latest police reports from Arkham. The system is still down but it's easy to piece together what happened from the reports alone.

She scans down the list of casualties, inmates and staff alike. A name catches her eye and for a second she's sure the report had to be wrong.

Victor Zsasz: Body pulled from the bay, the knife that killed him still lodged in his head. From the angle of the knife, he was clearly killed in close quarters combat by a superior opponent.

Her fingers fly over the keys as she pulls up the list of all known actors on Arkham that night. A quick query tells her what she already knew. There was no one else on Arkham during the incident with the ability to kill Zsasz in hand-to-hand combat.

She glances back at the casualty list, Zsasz might not have been the only target...

A quick search derails that line of thinking, other than the Warden being MIA and the death of Dr. Young none of the other casualties were persons of interest.

She pulls up the latest camera feed and the sight of the Arkham Mansion ablaze fills her monitor.

Barbra frowns, when did that happen? Batman neutralized Joker's operations in the mansion and Ivy's plants wouldn't have caused this. She looks back at the pictures of Zsasz's body. Could these two incidents be connected? Zsasz didn't kill himself and the mansion definitely didn't set itself on fire. Looking at the evidence she had so far it all points to one conclusion.

There was someone else on Arkham during the incident who had managed to evade detection from both Batman and Joker. That's not a long list of people, but all of them are serious threats and everything points to at least one of them being in the city tonight.

She pulls up coms. First, let the others know what she found, then she'd start narrowing down the list of suspects. Whoever it was she would find them. It's only a matter of time.

A gunshot rips through the silence. Her hand flies back to the escrima sticks stored in her chair only to realize too late that she was falling.

Her chair tips to the side, crashing to the ground and leaving her sprawled across the floor.

She shoves herself up on her elbows, her mind running overtime trying to process what had just happened.

The wheel on her wheelchair had been shot out...

A shadow looms over her.

"Been a while Babs."

Her breath catches in her throat.

"Jason?!"


	7. Nothing Personal

Batman drags an unconscious Harvey Dent past the equally unconscious bodies of his men and through the doors of the bank. Batman hands Dent off to the GCPD officers right as his com clicks on. For a moment there is only silence, he's about to ask what's going on when the sound of a gunshot echoes across the line.

"Report!" He's already moving, his feet hit the rooftop as he gets a response.

Dick's voice comes on the line. "I'm with Robin, we're fine."

"Tch, Nightwing and I are in the Diamond district Father, the shot did not come from us." That's Damian's voice.

Tim chimes in next. "Red Robin reporting, I'm in Central Gotham clearing up the last of Joker's fake bombs. No gunshot to report."

"Black Bat and Spoiler here, we're in Chinatown. No gunfire here." Stephanie's words are clipped and rushed.

"Safe." Cassandra's voice is as calm as ever.

…

…

…

"No..." The horror in Dick's voice is palatable.

"Omigod." Stephanie whispers.

Batman summons the Batwing. "Everyone, get to the Clocktower, now!"

* * *

Barbara stares up at the figure looming over her as the frantic voices of her teammates come over the speakers. In the dim light of the room, all she can see is his silhouette but she'd know that voice anywhere. He's not in his Red Hood getup, just jeans, and a black hoodie. She can't see much more but the soft glow her monitors give off is just enough to see the gun aimed at her head.

How did he get in? There was no alert. She designed the security system herself, nothing gets in or out of the Clocktower without her knowing about it and he bypassed it completely.

She squares her shoulders and glares up at him. She'll find the flaw in her system later. First things first. "What are you doing here, Jason?"

For a moment he doesn't respond and then-

"Isn't it obvious?"

* * *

Batman climbs into the cockpit of the Batwing and guns it. Ten minutes out, it's too long. To much time for things to go wrong.

"ETA?!" He barks into the coms.

"Six minutes out," Tim responds immediately.

"Seven. We'll make it, we have to." Dick's voice.

"Five minutes here, we can see the Clocktower already," Stephanie reports.

As the seconds tick by Batman runs through every possible threat that could've gotten into the Clocktower. Ra's, Vandal Savage, Deathstroke maybe, any number of magic users, or alien attack. Too many possibilities and not enough information and they don't even know if she's still alive.

Enough, don't make assumptions. Get to the Clocktower.

Batman throws the Batwing into overdrive. The minutes feel like centuries but he reaches the Clocktower just as Black Bat and Spoiler do.

He jumps out of the Batwing and lands next to them on a nearby rooftop. Stephanie is staring at her com, desperate for an answer.

Batman raises a hand to his ear to get an ETA report from the others. He doesn't get the words out before the windows of the Clocktower explode.

* * *

Jason stares down at Barbara as she glares up at him from the floor. Anyone else in this position might drop their guard. He won't, he knows her. Knocking Babs out of her wheelchair didn't make her any less dangerous. She may have reduced mobility but she still has home court advantage.

"What do you mean 'Isn't it obvious'? Vague threats aren't your style Jason." There isn't even a hint of fear in her voice.

He huffs out a laugh, it sounds hollow but he doesn't care. "Yeah, you'd know. You've always been an expert on what I'm not."

She winces at his words, it's not as satisfying as it should be. He's to busy reliving that night in the manor kitchen.

You'll never be Dick Grayson.

"So that's what this is about? Revenge for something I said years ago?"

"Of course not, and you don't really believe that either." He walks in a slow circle towards her computers. Making sure to keep a good distance between them. "For the record, this isn't about you. Just like how what you said back then wasn't about me. You were showing your allegiance, drawing a line in the sand. You were siding with Dick against Bruce, it was never about me."

Jason drops the device in his hand on top on her console. "Just like how destroying your systems isn't about you."

Barbara's eyes go wide. "What!?"

Jason hits the switch and throws himself over her just before the charges detonate. He feels the Clocktower shake as the charges he planted on the servers below them detonate. Dust and debris rain down on them as the vibrations come to an end.

The second the shaking stops Jason rolls to his feet. He glances down at Barbara who's just staring at him like she's never seen him before.

"Nothing personal." He says coldly before taking off into the bowels of the now destroyed Clocktower.

* * *

Abby kicks off her shoes the second she walks in the door of her postage stamp of an apartment. Mentally and physically exhausted by everything that had happened tonight. After the time it took GCPD officers to reach them, get checked out by the paramedics, and give her statement it was well into the small hours of the morning.

Abby collapses onto the beat-up couch, mentally calculating the chances of making it to her classes on time and giving up on the idea in the same thought.

Abby opens her eyes and counts the cracks on the ceiling, it wasn't the first time she had almost been killed at Arkham, it wasn't the first time she had watched her coworkers die at the hands of inmates, it was just part of the territory. Arkham has a high turnover rate for staff, you either get out or you die. Senior staff like officer Cash and Boles are rare, you either had a sixth sense for danger and knew not to dig too deep like Cash or you were just a corrupt rat like Boles who was lucky enough to stay on the Joker's good side. Arkham is Joker's territory, everyone knows it, the staff, the inmates, the other rogues. Everyone but Batman.

At first, it's baffling how the corruption in Arkham goes unnoticed until you learn how they do it. Then the confusion turns to rage and you realize that you were a part of that cover-up. The first rule of Arkham, Don't ask questions, go about your business, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The more Abby learned about what was really going on at Arkham, the illegal experiments funded through shell companies, organ trafficking, getting some one's enemies declared insane and committed to Arkham then feeding them to Croc, and much much more. There is no evidence about what's happening on the surface, books are balanced, the cameras never saw a thing, and no one is ever reported missing. Inmates have a higher rate of death than the staff, but what can you expect from the criminally insane. This is the best we can do.

Abby remembers asking Dr. Young about the Red Hood's status a few days after his "escape". Would he be sent straight to Blackgate or would he be brought to Arkham for another psych eval by a certified doctor to document his sanity before being shipped to Blackgate?

Everyone Batman brings to Arkham is criminally insane, you should reevaluate your diagnosis.

Right then and there the mirror shattered and down the rabbit hole she went. Opened her eyes and saw Arkham for the first time, saw past the facade of an Asylum barely able to hold the worst that Gotham had to offer, full of typical Gotham corruption and bribes. When in reality it was the opposite. Arkham isn't hindered by corruption, it runs on corruption. It reminds her of the speakeasies of the prohibition era, it's easy to find the obvious places, but no one would look past that. After all, they found what they were looking for, why look any deeper. It wasn't like anything else was going on.

The only times Batman investigates anything at Arkham it's because one of the rogues escaped and that is it. Whether that changes after the incident last night or the incident is overlooked as an exception to the rule is completely up in the air.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that all the evidence is obvious if you look at the inmates. Not the security footage, not the reports, the inmates. Actually look at them, see the way they move, the signs of injuries, how they interact with others around them and the pattern emerges. The evidence of abuse, or experimentation and worse, if anyone ever bothered to look at them, but they don't. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Anyone who tries to report something gets killed by the inmates and the report vanishes. Another casualty of Arkham. All you can do is watch, she knew that long before her curiosity lead her down into the cells under Arkham.

Abby presses her palms against her eyes as the image that has haunted her for the past six months burns her once again. The sight of him chained to the wall in that cell, the bloody half-healed scars, the brand… Completely unconcerned for his own safety, desperate to for her to run and forget what she saw. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Again and again and again.

A quiet knock on the door pulls her out of her thoughts. Abby carefully gets to her feet and casts a glance at the clock. Almost 4 in the morning. She carefully walks to the door and looks through the peephole. When she sees who's on the other side she can't undo the locks fast enough.

She throws the door open ushers the Red Hood into her apartment.

"You got out! Are you hurt?" Abby says as she redoes the locks before turning to face him.

"Yeah, I'm… I'm alright. Nothing that needs attention." His words are distant and sound almost confused.

He turns to look at her, lowering his hood on his hoodie as he does. "Just did something really stupid, kicked the hornet's nest. Didn't have anywhere else I knew they wouldn't look cept Arkham. Not going back there." His eyes flick around her apartment to the tune of the nervous twitch in his hands. Dissociation and panic warring with each other for control. His eyes finally settle on hers.

"Shouldn't have come here. Putting you in danger but- I. I can't-"

Panic wins.

His legs give out and he falls to his knees.

"Is… Is this real?" He stares down at his scarred hands, desperation mounting with every word. "This... This has to be real right? I made it out, I've never made it this far before so that means it's real. Unless… unless that's what they want me to think unless I'm still there!"

Abby feels her heart break as she carefully lowers herself to sit in front of him and holds out her hands. "Hood, give me your hand."

For a second he just watches her, then he cautiously extends a hand and places it in her own. She takes his hand and presses it to the pulse point in her neck.

"Feel that?" She asks. Seeing desperate hope flare to life in his eyes has her cursing Joker, Batman, and everyone else who walks through Arkham blind to the horrors happening right in front of them when they can do something about it.

"I'm real, you made it out, you're free."

Jason carefully raises his other hand and cups the side of her face. "You're real. This is real!"

The energy that had returned to his voice disappears just as suddenly as exhaustion overwhelms him. His body goes limp, slumping into her arms. She carefully arranges him so he's lying comfortably with his head in her lap. Even in the dim light his scars are visible, jagged lines across the back of his hands, a long scar along the right side of his neck, well healed, barely visible scars are scattered across his face easily forgotten next to the letter J branded into the skin of his cheek.

Abby holds him close, vowing that the only way Joker will reach the scarred boy in her arms is over her dead body.

"I'm here," She whispers. "I'm right here, Hood."

"Jason," He all but whispers as darkness closes in. "My name's Jason."


	8. Sanctuary

For the first time in a long time, Jason is warm.

There is no damp chill sinking into his bones, the biting sting of metal cuffs is gone, it feels like warmth is radiating around him. He feels like he's lying on a cloud.

He's afraid to open his eyes.

Was it all just a dream? Could he really deal with that?

Only one way to find out.

He cracks one eye open and immediately regrets it as the light burns. He throws up his hands to block the light, blinking away white spots as his eyes begin to adjust.

Light filters through closed blinds from the one window in the room, just enough to see the dust particles dance through the air.

Sunlight?

 _I never thought I would see the sun again._

"Morning,"

Jason jerks in surprise. Jumping to his feet, wildly searching for the source of the sound before his eyes land on Abby in the small kitchen area of the apartment sitting at a table covered with textbooks.

"Or well afternoon, you slept for about 12 hours. God knows you needed it, hungry?" She continues, unconcerned by his erratic behavior, shifting some of the books around so he would have somewhere to sit at the table.

"I..." Jason just blinks at her trying to maintain his grasp on reality.

He actually made it, he made it out of Arkham undetected, destroying Joker's Titan stash in the process and sending Quincy Sharp's Arkham City plans up in smoke along with the man himself. He was able to do all that, in no small part, thanks to the information she gave him. The risks she must have taken to gain that information in the first place are insane and that's just the stuff he knows about. What would she risk so much to help him? It doesn't make sense.

"Are you real?" His mouth shuts with an audible snap as he realizes what he said. Ticking off the one person helping you is a really bad idea, potential hallucination or not.

But she doesn't seem upset by his words in the least. "Well, that's easy enough to prove. Here, give me your hand."

 _This is what she did last night._ He realizes as his feet carry him over to her and places his hand in hers.

Once again she takes his hand and presses it to the pulse point on the left side of her neck. He feels the steady beat of her heart under his fingers. Undeniable and real. Anchoring him to this moment.

He lets out a sigh of relief and drops into the chair next to her before he loses the feeling in his legs again.

"Now that we have that cleared up, do you think you can eat anything?" She asks moving the majority of the textbooks off the table and into a backpack leaning against a table leg.

Could he eat something? He had spent a year in the cells under Arkham, what little food he received could barely even be called food leaving him badly malnourished. He hadn't been starved but it was a close thing. And that doesn't even factor in all the drugs that are still in his system. If he ate something his body couldn't handle it could do a lot of damage.

"I don't know," He finally admits, "maybe?"

Abby nods knowingly, "Something bland then, I've got oatmeal. Want to see if you can keep it down?"

Jason thinks about it for a second. "That might work." He says slowly.

"Alright, one bowl of oatmeal coming up." She says as she gets up and starts rummaging through the cabinets.

Jason watches her move about the little kitchenette, struck by the domesticity of the situation and the ease of her actions. Completely unconcerned about the dangerous criminal sitting at her kitchen table.

"Do you make all the strays you take in breakfast or am I just special?"

"Just the ones who are hungry." She replies with a grin, depositing the container of oatmeal mix, bowl, and spoon on the counter before turning to look at him.

"Are you ok with me making it or do you need to make it yourself?"

For a second he just looks at her and then... Oh.

She's offering him the chance to make sure that no one has tampered with the food, something that happens frequently at Arkham, above and below ground.

"Yeah, thanks." He mumbles as he gets up and busies himself with the ingredients.

"No problem. The kettle's in the cupboard on the right. Just let me know if you can't find something." She replies, dropping back down into her seat and cracking open the textbook in front of her. Completely at ease.

Jason retrieves the kettle and gets to work. It's not the most complicated thing he's ever made, not by a long shot, but the simple process of making himself something to eat has his hands shaking.

When was the last time he ate something that he had prepared himself? He honestly doesn't remember. It was so long ago. It's hard to think back, past all the darkness and pain. He can just barely focus on the task in front of him.

Within a few minutes he is back at the table, steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of him. He almost chokes as he takes the first bite, caught off guard. Simple bland oatmeal mix is far from the best thing he's ever eaten, especially compared to the oatmeal Alfred used to make for breakfast, but after a year of moldy food crawling with maggots, it tastes like heaven. It takes all of his self-restraint to not devour it down as fast as he can. He takes small bites, carefully measuring his stomach's reaction to the food as he goes.

He manages to finish off half of the oatmeal before he can't eat anymore. Abby finally looks up from her book when he sets the spoon down.

"All finished? Think it will stay down?"

"It doesn't feel like my body's rejecting it, let's hope it stays that way."

"That's good to hear, just put a plate over the bowl and throw it in the fridge if you want to save it for later." She says before she returns to highlighting certain passages in her book.

Jason wordlessly follows her suggestion, he's not about to waste food, before returning to his seat across from her. Her attention still on her book, completely focused on the task in front of her and not the trained killer sitting across from her.

Ok, her nonchalance is officially getting to him. "How are you so calm about all of this?"

"Do I have any reason not to be?" She replies, closing her book and giving him her full attention.

Jason rolls his eyes "Oh, I don't know maybe the fact that I'm a dangerous criminal with a body count who was sent to Arkham, not to mention the fact that the Joker had me for a year. Aren't you worried that I might snap and kill you?"

"As long as you get me before my parents, meh." She says with a slight shrug of her shoulder.

Well, that wasn't the answer he was expecting. "There's a story there." He finally manages.

"Yes, there is." She admits looking down at her hands, twisting her fingers together before looking back up at him.

"I know this is a dumb question and feel free to not answer but, how are you doing?"

A part of him immediately bristles at the question, she found him, she saw him. Half dead and chained to a wall in a puddle of his own blood, then barely able to stand on his own two feet and a millisecond from cutting his own throat open, to on his knees in the middle of her apartment unable to tell what's real and what isn't, like how the fuck does she think he's doing?

The rest of him…

Flashes of memory come back to him, he feels bile start to claw its way up the back of his throat as laughter screams through his mind. Threatening to drag him under. He shudders and forces it back down.

"I… I don't… I _can't._ " He finally manages, looking up at her only to stop short.

Abby hasn't moved from her seat but the room is slightly darker then it was before and what little light has been filtering in through the blinds is now at a different angle.

Jason swallows back his rising panic. "How…?" He doesn't even know what to ask.

"How long were you unresponsive? About two hours." She shakes her head ruefully. "I guess that answers my question, I'm sorry for putting you through that."

Jason presses a hand to his forehead, it didn't feel like anytime had passed since she asked that question but the evidence is staring right at him. Even the clock on the microwave now read 6:20…

Digital red numbers staring back at him.

He tears his gaze away, wrenching his entire body around so quickly that the legs of his chair squeal against the linoleum. Clamping his eyes shut tight, desperately trying to will away the sight of the timer ticking down to his death. The debris ripping through his body as the bomb detonated, the feeling of his suit fusing to his skin.

"Jason!"

Abby? She didn't sound any closer, she didn't sound like she had moved at all.

"Jason, what do you need me to do?"

He clung to her voice like a lifeline. "The.. numbers." He manages to grit out.

"The numbers on the microwave?" He manages a jerky nod.

"You need me to cover them?"

"Please!" He pleads and hates himself for it.

He hears her get up from her chair, a few seconds later he hears a drawer open and the telltale sound of masking tape. While she works he focuses on his breathing, in for four, hold for seven, out for eight, repeat. Don't think, just breathe.

By the time she returns to her seat his heart rate has returned to normal. He risks a glance back into the kitchen relieved to see the offending numbers safely covered under multiple layers of masking tape.

He drops his head onto the table with a thud. First he spaces out for _two fucking hours_ then he has a flashback from looking at a _microwave_. He just can't catch a break. "Jesus fucking Christ." He grits out.

"That's one way to put it," Abby says mildly.

Jason levers his head up and gives her a look of disbelief. "You sat there for two hours while I was doing a pretty damn good impression of a potted plant and then less than a minute after I come back down to earth I have a freakout over your microwave and none of this bothers you?!"

"I'm a grad student, surviving two hours of boredom comes with the territory." She says dryly.

He lifts his head off the table and turns his chair back to face her. "No, seriously. Do you know how much danger you put yourself in by helping me? And not just from me. If _anyone_ figures out that I'm here, that you helped me in any capacity you've got Joker's attention, worse you've got _Batman's_ attention. You'll lose everything and if you're _extremely_ lucky you'll die quick."

"I know, I know exactly what will happen to me! I've seen it a hundred times at Arkham! What happens when someone tries to stand up and say 'this is wrong!' They die, horrifically, and whoever they were trying to help get to watch them die!"

"So why? What would you put yourself at risk like this? Especially when you know how it ends."

Abby looks away, her hand going to the Star of David around her neck. "Before my grandma died she would tell me stories, of growing up in the countryside, about the old games she and her friends used to play, and about the day the Nazi's came for them."

Her hand tightens around the metal as she continues.

"She told me about how their neighbors just watched, stood there and watched as they were herded up like cattle, packed into train cars, and sent to die. You hear those stories and you think to yourself: 'That won't be me, I would have said something, I would have done something!' and here I am standing by and watching! I refuse to be cowed into doing nothing! I know what will happen to me if I'm discovered and I don't care! I can't save everyone but I will do _everything_ in my power to help who I can! No matter what it costs me."

The following silence is deafening. After a moment she looks back up at him. "Does that answer your question?"

Are words even appropriate right now? Jason nods his head, watching her carefully. There's more to her motivations than that, he can tell, but every word is pure passion and truth. She reminds him of Leslie Thompkins, determined to plant herself in the worst Gotham can offer to do the most good for the people who need it. People who most of Gotham don't even see.

The only difference is, Dr. Tompkins has the backing of Wayne Enterprises, Batman, and the support of everyone in Crime Alley. If some gang leader tried to force Leslie's clinic to pay protection money they'd have a riot on their hands long before Batman could arrive. Abby is walking into Arkham day in and day out without any support. If something goes wrong there's no one coming to save her and yet she does it anyway. She needs all the help she can get.

"Remember what I told you?" Jason asks her. "When you first found me under Arkham, the instructions I gave you."

Her eyes go wide with recognition. "Yes! Yes of course! Here." She jumps up from her seat and begins rummaging through a nearby bookshelf, pulling out an unmarked binder from under about a dozen other binders and heavy textbooks and rushing back to the table.

"Here's everything I have, every incident I saw or heard about, what I know happened, who was involved, and where the incident occurred. All in chronological order from the day I found you up until last night."

Jason pulls the binder to him and starts flipping through the pages. Some of the entries had very little detail and were mostly word of mouth. Others had everything down to the drugs used and their doses. A year's worth of evidence about what's really going on at Arkham tagged and cataloged. A roadmap for taking it all down.

"This is everything I need. Nice job."

Abby grins at the compliment. "I'm not going to ask what you're going to do with that information, plausible deniability and all, and I'll keep updating it whenever I find something new, but what about the Bats? They might not have paid attention to Arkham before now but there is a chance they will after last night."

Jason sighs and closes the binder. "I won't be able to make any moves until I'm healed, by then I should have a better idea of what they know and how close an eye they keep on Arkham." That's not going to be anytime soon, just waiting for his body to heal is going to be a month at least, and that's not factoring in how long it will take to detox.

"Besides, I have it on good authority that they're a little busy right now."

"Really?" Abby asks looking him over. "Does this have anything to do with the fact that you're covered in dust?"

Jason glances down at himself. "Yeah well, long story short I've disabled their eyes and ears temporarily. They'll have everything back up and running within 48 hours but by then my trail will have gone cold."

"That's what you meant when you said that you kicked the hornet's nest. Now you just have to wait them out, wait for them to stop looking for you." Her eyes grow wide with realization. "You're using the same trick Joker used when he captured you!"

Jason doesn't respond, just stares down at his scarred hands.

"You want to see if they'll fall for it twice. If they'll give up on you twice." Her words are soft but he can hear the anger in them.

"Three times," Jason admits under his breath, feeling the phantom pain slicing through the side of his neck, and that's just in this life. Back when he was Robin… Did they ever believe in him?

"Those..!" Abby hisses before shaking herself out of her anger.

"Alright, as much as I'd love to spend the rest of the night plotting revenge they're not my concern, you are. What do you need to do now?"

"That's- a good question." God, he's a mess right now, he can plan to survive an immediate threat or focus whatever's right in front of him but beyond that, thinking about what he needs, making decisions for himself. It's like there's a wall in the way.

Abby watches his internal struggle with a light of understanding in her eyes.

"If I can make a suggestion..." She says slowly waiting for him to nod before she continues.

"You just crawled out of Hell, now that you've got some food in you I'd say a shower is the next step."

Jason blinks at her in surprise. Why didn't he think of that? God knows he needs one right now, covered in blood and dust. Then all the memories come raining down.

He winces as he clenches his hands into fists. Remembering the burning sensation in his chest as he fought for air.

Abby watches his reaction, "Let me amend that, I have a bathroom with a sink, washcloths, and dry hair shampoo. Does that sound better?"

Jason just nods, the bone-deep exhaustion takes root once again as he shoves the memories away.

"If you're up for it the bathroom is through there. I just need to run out and get you some new clothes, you can't just keep wearing the same bloodstained hoodie every day."

Jason immediately starts to protest the idea of her spending money on him but she beats him to the punch.

"Don't worry. I just got my paycheck including the hazard pay I earned from the incident last night. Their way of bribing us to stay on, and thanks to you I'm alive to spend it."

Jason put his hand up in surrender. "Alright fine, but once this is all over I will pay you back."

"Deal." She says retrieving her purse and heading for the door.

"Abby," She glances back at him. "Thank you."

"Anytime, Jason."

* * *

Why.

That is the word plaguing Barbara Gordon right now. Why.

Why did Jason attack the clock tower? Why did he only attack her system? Why did he throw himself over her as the charges detonated?

She can hear the others moving around her position in the Batcave. Less than 30 seconds after Jason disappeared into the rubble she had been all but swarmed by Stephanie and Cass with Bruce only two steps behind them.

Bruce was about to go running off after Jason but she had stopped him. Made him wait for backup to arrive before setting off. This attack could mean a million different things and one of them could easily be bait for a trap Jason had set. What better time to lay a trap for Batman than after he had survived Joker's madhouse and wasn't at full strength?

Why would he move now?

Too many questions not enough answers, limited facts and far too many variables.

People are hovering around her overprotective and worried. Steph and Cass are off to the side in earshot in case she asks them for something, but Dick never learns.

"Enough!" She snaps brushing off his latest attempt to comfort her, ignoring his wounded look.

She looks over at Tim who has just returned from the Clocktower. "What have you found?"

"The explosives Jason used had two stages, the first stage was designed to crack a hole in the server's outer covering and do concussive damage. The second stage released acid onto the hardware. Everything's gone, all the equipment needs to be replaced."

Barbara narrowed her focus to this new information. Devices like those take time to build, not to mention the risk. Placing acid and explosives in the same device is dangerous enough but having both elements activate within seconds of each other? Why would he take such a risk?

"He needed to make sure it was destroyed." She releases. "He needed to make sure that my systems were completely destroyed, whatever he's planning it depends on me being out of the equation."

"But he knows that we'll have your systems back up within 48 hours..." Dick says.

"So whatever he's planning is going down now." Bruce is already heading towards the Batwing when Alfred appears in his path.

"Master Bruce if I might recommend that you at least try to get some rest while I tend to your numerous fractures, lacerations, and burns. I'm sure they will contact you when they find something."

Barbara smiles as she watches Bruce be browbeaten into Alfred's care. Cass drags Dick away before he can attempt to comfort her again and the rest of them suit up and are out of the cave within in minutes.

Barbara turns back to the Batcomputer, running coms like always as they search the city for Jason.

Normally she's certain that they would find whoever they were looking for, but right now? She can't help but feel like Jason's already slipped through their fingers.

She rests her head in her hands and once again combs through the memory of Jason appearing behind her a little over an hour ago.

The sight of him, reappearing in the last place he should have been able to reach. She's run her security set-up through her mind again and again and she still can't figure out how he got in. If he can pull that off the chances of him being able to hide from them skyrocket.

The way he had talked, that this wasn't about her, that he wasn't after her, that this wasn't personal, but as she lay among the debris of her systems, her identity, it sure as hell felt personal.

 _Is that how he felt that night? Attacked as a means to an end? Did it burn him too?_

Again, too many questions but one of them sticks out.

Pushing aside the implications of him protecting her as the charges detonated, she'd deal with the emotional whiplash of dissecting that later, something else was bothering her.

When he threw himself over her she had expected to be almost crushed by his bulk, he's almost 200 pounds of pure muscle, not to mention any gear he might have on under his civilian clothes.

So why did he feel like skin and bones?

He had lost a minimum of 50 pounds from the last time she saw him if not more. His muscle definition was drastically reduced but that wouldn't account for all of the weight loss.

She runs through all the possibilities of what might have happened to him and none of them bode well. Something had happened to him, and she missed it.

 _Jason, what have you gotten yourself into?_


	9. Alive?

To say that the first week was rough is an understatement.

Abby knew that Jason's dissociation would only last so long. Feeling nothing directly after trauma is a common coping mechanism, but it never lasts forever. The numbness eventually wears off and it all comes rushing back.

Abby sits on the floor across from where Jason is curled up, eyes wide and staring right through her. Trying to disappear into the corner of the room, his corner. It had become clear within the 24 hours following his escape that sleeping vertically on any surface wasn't going to be possible, not after a year of sleeping chained to a wall. Abby had responded by offering him a corner of her bedroom to sleep in. The feeling of having his back to the wall helped him get some sleep but only just. Being able to see her the second he wakes up as well as the door also helped, but some days… Some days that isn't enough.

Abby leans back against the side of her bed and glances at her phone. Almost 6 in the morning. He's been unresponsive since 2. Four hours ago she had woken up to the sound of frenzied breathing. Then she had seen the look of terror in Jason's eyes and knew something was terribly wrong.

He had been having dissociative episodes all week it was clear that this one was different. Usually, if they caught it early she could calm him and prevent him from going completely unresponsive, but it was clear that this one was so intense that she couldn't risk going near him without making it worse. Most likely the result of a waking up from a nightmare and not being able to shake the fear.

He starts to panic and then shuts down. That's been the pattern for the past week, but it only happens when his memories of Arkham start to surface. His reaction to the digital clock on her microwave was, as far as she could tell, a textbook PTSD flashback clearly from a different event before the last year.

These episodes are something else entirely.

They are definitely triggered by the memories of what he suffered, that much is clear to her, but the length of the episodes varies wildly, from minutes to hours. They've passed his last record by at least another hour now.

The more she watches him the more she is certain that the emotions in the memories determine how long he is unresponsive. The hippocampus records and remembers memories based on emotion, so logically the stronger the emotion attached the stronger the memory. Making traumatic memories particularly damaging.

Abby sighs and drops her head in her hands, she can make theories about what's happening to him all day but none of it gives her the slightest clue of how to wake him up.

She reaches under her bed and pulls out a burner phone Jason had hidden there. It had been one of the few things he had on him when he had first arrived. He gave her a number to enter and a code word to use to get help if things went sideways.

Abby stares at the phone in her hand. Jason had been very clear, that if she called whoever was at the end of this line help would come in less than 24 hours. He had also told her that contacting this person could also lead to getting Batman's attention.

They had both agreed that if he was unresponsive for more than five hours she would call the number.

She places the phone by her side. She had an hour until the deadline. All she can do now is wait.

And wait.

The minutes tick by and Jason still stares straight ahead. A part of her is thankful that it's Saturday morning and she had nowhere to be, no one to notice she's not there. The rest of her is too busy reeling over the what might happen if she calls that number.

Would help arrive before Batman can reach them? Or would they burst into her apartment and drag Jason off while she stood there helpless to do anything, knowing that it was her actions that brought them here.

Could she really live with herself if she was the reason he went back to Arkham?

It's not long before she's staring at her phone as it declares that it's 7 o'clock.

With shaking finger she picks up the burner phone.

She casts one last desperate look at Jason, begging him to wake up but there's nothing. No response.

He had already told her that whatever happens, he won't blame her. That won't be necessary, she already blames herself.

Abby enters the number and holds the phone to her ear.

It picks up before the first ring ends.

"Speak, quickly." The woman's voice on the other end is clipped and is dripping with authority, Abby feels herself sit up straighter.

"Code Phoenix." She keeps her voice from breaking, but only just.

There's a moment of silence, then…

"The line had been secured, what is your location?"

Abby rattles of her apartment address and the line goes dead.

The phone falls from numb fingers, Abby rests her head on her knees and tries to breathe.

The next hours are absolute torture, waiting for the sound of the door being kicked down, something smashing through the window, an all-out assault coming from all side. All the while Jason stares straight through her.

It's too familiar.

Almost 10 hours after Abby first woke up there's a knock at the door. She's on her feet in an instant. Heart pounding in her chest as she walks to the door and looks through the peephole.

Her hand freezes against the door as she processes who is on the other side of it.

She takes a deep breath and opens the door.

A woman strides past her and into the apartment. Dark hair, olive skin, piercing green eyes that give her a look that Abby swears can see into her soul.

"Shut the door and lock it quickly," Abby wordlessly moves to follow her instructions.

"Good, now where is he?" Her words are calm but the steel under is clear.

"This way." Abby leads the mystery woman through her apartment and pushes open the door to her room.

The woman walks into the room and her eyes find Jason.

Abby can hear her sharp intake of breath as her eyes land on the brand, but her steps never falter.

The woman knees before Jason and places her hands on either side of his face and says something under her breath. A few seconds later Jason's eyes begin to focus again. He reaches up and wraps a hand around hers.

"My son, what happened to you?"

"Nothing I couldn't survive." His voice is weak but it's there.

Abby sits down on her bed before her legs can give out.

"Oh, thank God." She whispers.

They talk for a while in a language she cannot understand or identify. She starts listening again when Jason starts speaking English.

"I would hear you in my head, telling me what to do to. I tried to fight them!"

"I know you did," The woman reassures him. "I know that you did everything you could to survive and escape. Look around, you've won."

"I don't feel like I've won." His words sound hollow.

"You won't, not now and not for some time but the wounds will heal. In time all wounds heal, even the deepest cuts."

She pushes his hair out of his eyes. "Now sleep, you are safe here. He won't find you, I'll make sure of it."

"Thank you." The hand he had wrapped around her hand releases and he leans his head back against the wall. In seconds he's asleep. Sleeping more soundly than Abby's even seen him.

The woman stands up, Abby also stands once those eyes land on her.

"A word." It's not a request.

Abby wordlessly follows her out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

"Jason informed me that you assisted with his escape and have been sheltering him from those who hunt him. A dangerous decision, for you and anyone associated with you and yet you have done so anyway, apparently on principle alone. That is a rare sight in most corners of the world, let alone Gotham."

Abby isn't sure if she is supposed to respond to that. Frozen under an unyielding emerald gaze.

Suddenly it softens.

"You have saved my son, I am forever in your debt. Thank you." The woman bows to her, leaving Abby stunned.

"I- your welcome, Ms..."

"Talia." She says straightening up, "Talia Al Ghul."

Abby's eyes widen as the name registers in her head. Al Ghul? Oh. Wow.

Talia smiles as she seen recognition cross Abby's face.

"Jason has told me some of what has transpired. Now I would like to hear what you have to say."

"Of course," Abby says quickly getting over the fact that the second in command of the League of Shadows was currently standing in her apartment. "Would you like to take a seat? This is going to take a while."

Abby doesn't know how long she talked, time didn't seem to mean anything as she recounted what she had seen for the past year. How she had found Jason under Arkham, gathering information at his request, their meeting during his escape, up until his arrival at her apartment.

Throughout the entire retelling, Talia's expression doesn't change once not until the end when Abby has no more words to say that the calm mask breaks.

"This entire time..." Talia whispers, a single hand clenching in anger.

Talia's eyes meet Abby's and Abby prays that that anger will never be aimed at her.

Talia continues, "When I heard that Jason had been brought to Arkham I began moving to secure his release, but thanks to an internal issue I wasn't able to mobilize immediately. By the time I was able to secure the resources I needed his 'escape' had already been reported. I assumed that he had gone to ground and ceased all plans to find him so his location wouldn't be compromised. I assumed that the information I was receiving was accurate. That is not a mistake I will ever make again."

Talia turns her attention back to Abby. "Abigail is it?"

For once hearing someone say her full name doesn't make her skin crawl. "Yes, ma'am."

"I cannot move Jason from this place without attracting unwanted attention, getting into the city undetected was enough of a trial and getting him out will result in a war that he does not need to endure. I the only option I have is to leave him in your care. I will have an account set up for any costs you might acquire housing him, and I will make sure they won't be able to trace it to you. If you are found out I will extract both Jason and you from the city, personally. Jason is adamant that he will not leave without you. It seems you've made quite an impression on him."

Abby fights the urge to look away from that piercing gaze. "I just did what I hope someone would do for me if I was stuck in a similar situation."

"Again, a rare sentiment. Especially in Gotham, easily destroyed or corrupted."

Talia stands and Abby quickly does the same.

Talia takes a step closer. "I pray that does not happen to you." The deadly intent of her words is clear as day.

With that, she is gone.

* * *

Seeing Talia again was like a balm against what was left of his battered soul.

Jason had woken up from a nightmare, a bad one. He doesn't remember it but he remembers the terror that followed him into the waking world. He could feel his mind shutting down unable to deal with the horrors he had endured.

Time doesn't mean anything when you dissociate, your grasp in reality slips, nothing can anchor you to the present.

Then he heard Talia's voice, calling to him, calling him back to her.

He was safe with her, is safe with her. Both now and back then. When the scars on his fingers were still fresh and the Pit screamed through his mind. She is safety. Nothing can touch him.

So he sleeps, for the first time in over a year, he sleeps without nightmares, without vicious laughter haunting every thought, without the shadow of disappointment following him.

He hears the sound of someone crying and for a second he thinks he's dreaming.

His eyes open slowly, adjusting quickly to the dim light. It must be sometime in the evening.

His eyes land on Abby. Sitting on her bed with head in her hands, crying.

He's on his feet in an instant. "Abby?"

"Jason!" She wipes the tears from her eyes. "You're awake. Are you feeling better?"

He hasn't felt this good since he first arrived at Arkham but right now that's the furthest thing from his mind.

"I'm fine what's wrong?" He takes a seat on the bed an arm's length away from her. Keeping a respectful distance.

"It's nothing, I'll be fine. Just an anxiety attack, I'll be fine in a bit."

"Did Talia say something to you?" As much as he loves Talia he knows first hand how she can wield terror, he had told her how Abby helped him, but if Talia threatened her…

"You mean her threat to kill me if I become corrupted? Death threats don't scare me, death doesn't scare me." The tears seem to have stopped but the haunted look in her eye remained. "No, today just felt very... familiar. It brought back bad memories."

Jason winces, he knows he woke her up, and he has no clue how long she sat vigil over him before Talia arrived. No idea what was going through her mind as she waited.

Guilt claws at his stomach. "I'm sorry."

"No!" Her reaction is immediate. "This isn't your fault, my bad memories have nothing to do with you. I promise." She turns to face him fully. "Using the phone to contact Talia, even using it at the agreed-upon deadline, the risk involved. That was the trigger, a part of me was certain that I'd brought the wolves down on us. That my carelessness had, once again, gotten me- had gotten you caught."

Jason's mind went into overdrive trying to process the new information, her comment about her parents when he first arrived, her fearlessness in the face of death, in the face of Talia's threats.

Suddenly it clicked.

"It wasn't just your Grandmother who was taken against her will." Green burns around the edges of his vision. "Someone came for you."

The corner of her mouth ticks up into a sad smile. "You're good."

Part of him, the part drowning in green flames desperately wanted to know what had happened. To hunt down whoever had hurt her, to make them pay. It's all too easy to smother that desire.

"You're not going to ask me what happened?"

"Not unless you want to tell me. You haven't pressed me, I won't press you." He could offer her that much, she deserves that much. What he wants doesn't enter into it.

"I've never told this story to anyone, it's kinda fitting that the first person tell is you."

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself before she begins.

"My parents like to pretend that they're Gotham royalty, in reality, they're minor nobles at best. Well off, financially secure, educated. That didn't stop their ambitions or their plans for me."

"They're determined to become a big name in Gotham's socialite scene. To climb the social ladder until they're up there with all the other prominent families. Their plan was to marry me off to some wealthy socialite. They were throwing me at the Waynes at every gala we attended, but I doubt they remember me. Just one of the dozens of potential matches thrown at them daily."

It was all Jason could do to keep a straight face, thankfully Abby was busy staring at her hands and unable to see whatever emotions were breaking through the cracks. She's 24, a year older than Dick. Jason thinks back, to the galas that he and Dick had attended together, some of the few times they even remotely got along was in the face of a common enemy; the matchmaking mothers with dollar signs in their eyes. He tries to place her among the young women thrown their way and fails. He had never paid attention to them, they were just another reason he hated going to galas.

"They were dead set on turning me into some trophy wife, didn't care that what I wanted. I was just a pawn to raising their station. You'd think we were in feudal France the way they talked. So when they discovered that their only child, their bargaining chip to a better life, was gay. They didn't take it well."

She takes a shaky breath.

"They were furious. Going on and on about how I had betrayed them, how I had sabotaged their ambitions. That it was all my fault. They all but locked me up, refused to let me leave the house and spent all day in the study crafting strategy. I knew something was coming, that I was standing in the eye of the storm. I spent days waiting in fear for the next shoe to drop, not knowing what would happen or when until it finally did."

"The official story was that I was sent to a prestigious boarding school, I guess they thought telling the world that they had their 16-year-old daughter dragged off to a mental hospital in the middle of the night kicking and screaming was bad PR."

It takes Jason two second to do the math, Abby's five years older than him. He was 11 when this had happened to her, an entire year before he had become Robin, a year before he could have done anything to help her, he had just missed her.

"I went through a year of conversion therapy. Being told every day that I was wrong. Every week there was one less person at the sessions, they wouldn't tell us what had happened. They didn't need to. We were better of dead in their eyes anyway, a few suicides didn't matter. They tried to change me, to break me. They failed."

"I learned how to pretend, to act like they wanted me to act. Good, obedient, didn't question, didn't fight back. It almost killed me to twist myself into something I'm not, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I convinced everyone that it had worked, on some level I even managed to convince myself. Once I was free I kept my head down, finished out high school and got into Gotham University. Started to undo the damage that had been done to me. I got as far away from my parent's influence as I could but they're still after me. They were all for me getting some college degree to make me more interesting to all the men they throw at me, but studying to get a doctorate and become a psychologist? They're afraid that will make me to intimidating to potential suitors."

"So they've been trying to sabotage me, I was able to get a Wayne foundation scholarship for undergrad but once I became a graduate student it suddenly got dropped. I take out student loans and I run into mountains of red tape. They're using what little influence and money they have to try to force me to come home so they can marry me off to get more. They're two-faced gold diggers trying to control me and I want nothing to do with them!"

Abby takes a shaky breath, running her hands through her hair in frustration, her tears flowing once again.

Jason wordlessly raises an arm in invitation and Abby curls into his side. They sit there in silence and Jason doesn't say a word, just lets her cry it out, all the fear and uncertainty and half-healed wounds that had been reopened today. It's when her tears finally begin to slow that he says something.

"You said that your parents are still trying to control you. Just say the word and they won't be a problem anymore. I'll make it look like a painful accident."

She gives him a weak smile. "That's very sweet of you but I don't want them dead."

"You're a better person than me."

She laughs at that. "Not really, I'm just content to leave them in the Hell they've built for themselves. That's all."

Now Jason was confused. "The Hell they've built?"

"They spend their days buying things they don't want with money they don't have to impress people they don't like. It's a never-ending cycle of misery, they'll never be happy with what they have. If they want to live their lives like that good for them. I just want them to leave me out of it and stop funding institutions that practice Gay conversion therapy."

"Huh." Well, that's one way to look at the world. He looks down at the woman in his arms. Taking in the dark circles under her eyes, she's exhausted.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Ummm…"

"Well, that answers that." Jason carefully extracts her from his side. "Get some sleep, no one will get you while I'm here."

"I don't doubt that," Abby says dryly as she crawls under the covers. Within minutes she's asleep.

Jason doesn't leave her side the entire night.

* * *

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

In the week since Jason's attack on the Clocktower, they had scoured the entire city. Every old haunt, every known associate, every lead no matter how slight and still nothing. Like he had disappeared into thin air, again.

This is the second time he's been able to slip through their fingers, first at Arkham and then in the Clocktower.

Jason, where are you?

"B!" Nightwing lands on the ledge next to him. "Talia's in Gotham."

"What! Where?"

"Diamond district, facial recognition picked her up five minutes ago. Oracle just sent out the alert. Black Bat is wrestling Robin back to the cave now."

Batman allows himself a sigh of relief. Dealing with Talia is always a challenge, often a deadly one, knowing that their son is out of the crossfire will make it easier to focus on dealing with her.

"Talia shows up a week after Jason reappears in Gotham, there's no way that's a coincidence." Dick growls, "She has to know something! I wouldn't be surprised if she had a hand in his escape a year ago."

Oracle's voice comes over the coms. "Slow down Nightwing. There was no League of Shadow activity in Gotham at the time, they were in the middle of a civil war. Even if Talia wanted to break Jason out she wouldn't have been able to launch a mission until well after the breakout had occurred."

"Enough," Batman interrupted, "where is she now."

"I've tracked her to an apartment building in the Diamond district, you guys aren't going to believe this."

* * *

It took Selina a moment to process who was standing at her door. "Well, this is a surprise."

"Good to see you too, Selina," Talia says dryly sweeping into Selina's apartment, stepping around the cats with practiced ease.

Selina sighs and closes the door. "To what do I owe this unexpected-" Her words are cut off as Talia throws her arms around Selina's neck and pulls her close.

"I found Jason," Her words barely a whisper against Selina's ear.

Selina wraps her arms around Talia in return. "How is he?" Selina whispers back.

"Bad," Selina can see the flash of anger in Talia's eyes. "I can't let Bruce find him."

"You need a reason to be in the city." Selina murmurs. Running her fingers through Talia's hair. "Are you sure you want to do it this way?"

"Only If you are." Talia rests her forehead against Selina's with a sigh. "I don't want you to think that I'm using you. If you don't want to I will find another way to hide in plain sight."

"Hmm, use our soon to be not so secret relationship to give you a reason to be in the city. Messing with our Ex and helping Jason at the same time." Selina grins. "Sounds like fun."

"Wonderful," Talia says, happy pushing her girlfriend against a wall and sinking into a kiss.


	10. First Steps

Their kiss is interrupted by a thump coming from the balcony.

Talia pulls back slightly. "Is that what I think it was?"

"Afraid so." Comes Selina's neutral response as she gazes at something over Talia's shoulder.

Talia watches Selina's expression turn from neutrality guarded to amused. "I think we made him trip. Dick managed to land on his feet although his face resembles a tomato. I don't see any others."

"I don't suppose that they're leaving?" Talia askes tiredly.

"No such luck."

Talia reluctantly pulls herself away from Selina, briefly admiring how her girlfriend looks in the black silk robe she had on, before turning to face the interlopers.

Bruce is stone-faced and standing on the balcony just outside the open doors with Dick one step behind him looking somewhat apologetic but determined. Either they were already on their way here to talk to Selina or Talia's detour past several traffic cameras on her way to Selina's apartment paid off.

"Your interrupting." Ice practically drips off Talia's words.

Dick looks slightly embarrassed but Bruce's expression doesn't so much as twitch.

"Why are you in Gotham?" Typical.

"It's not obvious?" She counters. She can hear Selina's muffled laughter behind her.

For a few moments, Talia and Bruce just glare at each other, then…

"You're together?!" The disbelief in Dick's voice is almost comical.

Selina's laughter is far less muffled as she drapes her arms around Talia from behind and rests her head on her shoulder.

"And it only took them three years to figure it out, world's greatest detectives." Selina's words are tinged with mirth, enjoying every second of this.

Dick looks even more startled by that information while Bruce was doing his usual impression of a stone wall.

"But- She's- You- How-" Dick shakes his head. "That's not why we came here." He says weakly. Clearly trying to regain some mental footing in the face of this new revelation.

Bruce steps in. "Last week there was an attack on one of our assets, what do you know about it."

Talia suppresses a smile. They're fishing, she could leave them empty-handed and send them back to the drawing board, or throw them a whale and lead them on a snipe hunt.

It takes only a second to chose the latter. "You're referring to Jason's attack on the Clocktower. He pulled that off quite well, didn't he. I assume the fact you're here means that you can't find him and that you think I had something to do with it."

"Jason got past Barbara's security system?" Selina sounds genuinely impressed, speaking before Dick or Bruce had a chance to continue their attempt at an interrogation. "Think I could borrow him for a few projects I'm working on?"

Dick anger was immediate. "He tried to kill her!"

"If he wanted her dead she would be," Talia says staring him down. "He tracks down his target and eliminates it, I didn't train him to do any less."

"You trained him to kill," Bruce growled. "You kept him from us when he should have been home."

Talia's eyes narrow. He wants to go there? Fine.

"You think that I could have stopped him if he wanted to leave if he wanted to return to you? You think anyone, anything could stop him?" Talia takes a step forward, removing herself from the warms of Selina's arms.

"Jason cannot be held against his will, he will free himself. Any situation, any circumstance, any obstacle, he will overcome it. He doesn't know how to do anything else. If he did he would have been long dead before you ever came across him. He doesn't need my help. He didn't need my help getting around your defenses and he certainly didn't need my help escaping from Arkham."

"It's so easy for you to blame me for decisions he came to all on his own, saying that I brainwashed him into becoming the Red Hood. Please, I wouldn't have survived the attempt. If I had tried to twist him into something he didn't want to be he would have killed me. A physical cage or a cage of the mind it doesn't matter it will not hold him. Not even my father would risk turning Jason's wrath upon himself."

"Whatever Jason is doing now it is of his own volition and without any assistance from me. Whether you believe that or not it makes no difference to me, as interrogating me has no effect on whatever plan Jason is working on now. Now if you two are quite finished, I believe we were in the middle of something and that you two are interrupting."

Selina steps forward, wrapping her arms around Talia once again. "And if you would be so kind as to pick up that planter that you knocked over on your way out," Selina says, her words far too sweet to be interpreted as anything other than a threat.

Talia swears she can hear Bruce's teeth grinding. "If I find out that you had anything to do with Jason's attacks..."

"Yes, yes, we're both very familiar with promises that you don't keep. Now if you'll excuse us." Talia says as Selina smothers laughter into her shoulder.

Dick retreats first with Bruce a second behind him, both disappearing into the night. Selina shuts the door behind them and draws the curtains.

Talia lets out a sigh. "What are the chances that they actually left?"

"Nil," Selina says turning to face Talia. "We'll have to check for bugs later but for right now I have a few ideas on how to get rid of out eavesdroppers."

"Oh really?" Talia says reading the look in her girlfriend's eyes. "What do you have in-"

Selina tackles her before she can finish her sentence.

* * *

Barbara mutes the feed from Selina's apartment and leans back in her chair. Bruce had managed to drop a bug just inside the doors that lead in from the balcony but she has no doubt that it will be destroyed once Selina and Talia are done 'catching up'.

Barbara drops her attempts at a straight face and dissolves into laughter. She had known that something was up when Batman had tripped over the planter but this? Talia and Selina are together and have been for years? Listening to Bruce try to stay on mission while on full emotional shutdown from the revelation that his two ex-girlfriends are together and scheming. Add Dick's usual tact in the face of any relationship drama ever and being a fly on the wall had never been so much fun.

She finally smothers her giggles. "So, how long do you think he's going to sulk?"

"A week at least." Comes Tim's response from behind her. "In between throwing himself into trying to find Jason in an attempt to distract himself."

Jason. She reluctantly pushes thoughts of Talia and Selina's relationship aside and turns to face Tim.

"Have you found anything?" She's not holding out hope.

Tim shakes his head in frustration. "Nothing, one second he was here and the next he's completely dropped off the radar. It's just like his escape from Arkham a year ago. We can figure out where he was but then the trail goes cold." He begins to pace. "I just don't understand how he did it the first time. Escaping Arkham grounds in the middle of a riot is one thing, but getting to the mainland and going to ground without being caught in a single security camera or accessing a single resource? Then appearing in the Clocktower, one place he shouldn't have been able to access, without any warning signs and being able to escape right out from under us again? Something's not right. We're missing something. Something big."

Barbara watches Tim pace. The damage done to the Clocktower had been repaired within 48 hours and her systems were back online within 24 hours. Looking around it was almost like nothing had happened, combined with a complete overhaul of her security system it was almost starting to feel like home again. Almost.

It wasn't the fact that Jason had attacked her that made her feel uneasy in her own stronghold. It was the fact that she hadn't seen it coming. From Jason's first escape from Arkham to his reappearance in the Clocktower to his second escape from the ruins of the Clocktower she had missed something. Looking back now the blind spots were obvious but she still didn't know what she was missing.

He had thrown himself over her as the charges detonated, protecting her in his injured state. Talia was correct, if Jason wanted her dead she would be. He had the perfect opportunity to kill her and he didn't. He was never after her, he just wanted to destroy her systems. He said it wasn't personal and he was telling the truth. They had assumed that it was so he could launch an attack on the Batfamily or some other target without her all-seeing sight tracking him down but a week had gone by and nothing. Her systems are back up and running and she can't find any trace of him. What Jason did while her systems were down is still a mystery. The same way his whereabouts after his escape from Arkham remains a mystery.

Wait, that's it!

"You've figured something out, haven't you?" She looks up to see that Tim has stopped pacing and is watching her expectantly.

"I have a theory but it doesn't leave this room." She says her mind rocketing ahead with this new revelation. "Don't tell Bruce or Dick about this, I want to make sure I'm on the right track before we bring anyone else in."

"Now I'm interested." Tim drops into the seat next to her.

"We don't know anything about Jason."

Tim shoots her a confused look. "What are you saying?"

"Think about it. We assumed that he was going to go on the attack after escaping from Arkham but after a year of silence he reappears once only to disappear again. We assumed that Jason was going to launch an attack on us after he destroyed my system, but my systems are back up and we haven't heard anything from him."

Tim's eyes widen in realization. "We keep assuming that he's coming after us and he doesn't. Every assumption we've made in the past year about Jason's actions has been wrong."

"It may be more than that, there are too many gaps in our timeline to know anything for sure about what Jason's been doing, where's he's been, or why. Enough with making assumptions, throw out everything we know about Jason and start from scratch." Barbara turns back to her computer and opens a new case file. Realizing how much she didn't know about Jason showed her how much she did know. That just might be enough to find him.

"We don't know anything about Jason." Tim muses. "I definitely won't breathe a word of this to Bruce or Dick. Their entire case for sending Jason to Arkham revolves around how well they claim they know him. I doubt they'd react well to this line of thinking." The anger in his voice did not go unnoticed by Barbara.

They both disagreed with the idea of sending Jason to Arkham. Regardless of what Jason's done putting him in the same class as Gotham's rogues, as the Joker, is just cruel. They had both kept an eye on the reports coming out of Arkham before Jason's escape in case they needed to step in and force his transfer to Blackgate in the event that something had happened. Regardless of what Bruce and Dick thought.

"We'll deal with them if we find something concrete." Barbara's fingers still over her keyboard before turning back to Tim.

"All cards on the table, there's something I haven't told anyone about the night Jason attacked me."

It takes her a few seconds to gather her words, Tim waits patiently.

"Jason was injured, I didn't realize it until he threw himself over me but once he had it was obvious. He was too light. He had lost at least 50 pounds and his muscle mass was severely diminished. Like he had been starved. He didn't move like he was hurt but when he landed over me… Tim, I could feel his ribs. Are we sure Jason left Arkham under his own power?"

Tim's face grew grim at this new revelation. "Like you said we don't know anything about Jason. Just because the League of Shadows wasn't active in Gotham at the time doesn't mean that there wasn't someone else in Gotham at capable of taking Jason right under our noses."

"That's what I'm afraid of, but no more jumping to conclusions. The only way we're going to find Jason is by finding hard evidence."

"And that means going back to Arkham." Tim gets to his feet. "I'll start poking around Arkham see if I can find someplace to start."

Barbara nods and turns back to her screen. Pulling up everything she has on the day of Jason's 'escape'. Pouring over every detail with fresh new eyes and no assumptions. Analysing the data just like she does when a new player appears in Gotham. She missed something but now she knows where to find answers.

 _Jason, I don't know what's happened to you but I promise, I will find you._

* * *

Jason wakes up to the sound of Abby's cell phone alarm going off. The woman next to him stirs, blindly reaching for the source of the offending sound and knocking the phone off the nightstand in the process.

Abby groans and reluctantly pulls herself out of bed to retrieve her phone from the floor. She flops back onto the bed next him glaring at her phone screen as she flips through her email.

"Only you would set an alarm for 6 am on a Sunday morning," Jason says sitting up. Completely awake despite the early hour. Two nights of sleep in a row free of nightmares leaving him feeling well rested and lighter for the first time in a long time.

"Comes with the territory." She says stifling a yawn. "The new Warden has everyone pulling double shifts until Arkham is back up to full staff. I'm going to fall behind my classes if I don't spend the weekend studying."

"And you have to make up lost time." Guilt claws at his stomach once again. She had spent an entire day watching over him instead of getting work done.

"If you try to apologize for having a dissociative episode I'm going to throw a pillow at you," Abby warns not looking up from her phone.

She knows him too well. "Alright fine. But I'm making you breakfast. There's pancake mix in the top cabinets, right?"

She gives him an amused look. "You say that like you don't have my entire kitchen memorized."

"I'll take that as a yes." He says hopping out of bed and making a beeline for the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes later Abby wanders out of her room to find a stack of pancakes waiting for her at the table.

"You are officially the best roommate ever." She declares taking a seat.

"I am living here for the foreseeable future, might as well make myself useful." He says taking a seat across from her and setting his bowl of oatmeal in front of him. His appetite was slowly returning and he was able to eat more each day but he was still playing it safe. One wrong move could set him back days.

"I have a hot guy making me breakfast, if my parents could see this they'd be overjoyed." She thinks about it for a second. "Or they'd be furious that you weren't some rich socialite. Probably the second one."

"Nothing you do is good enough for them, huh?" Jason knows that feeling.

"Nope, I gave up on earning their approval years ago. I could magically turn into a straight, marriage-oriented, golddigger and I doubt it would be enough. But enough about them, despite what they'd like to think they don't control my life. Besides the occasional musing about how mad they would be at my life choices, I try not to waste precious brain power on them. I have better things to do than worry about what dumb plan they're trying to think up now."

Jason watches as Abby happily digs into her stack of pancakes. Watches how easily she swept thoughts of her parents and their plots out of her mind. That they weren't worth her time and energy and their plans were a minor annoyance at best. She had an anxiety attack last night and it's not weighing on her. She's not pretending either, he knows when someone's pretending to fine when they're falling apart inside. She's put it out of her mind and moved on.

How does she do that?

"Do what?" Abby asks looking up from her plate curiously.

Jason winces, he must have said that out loud. Oh well, In for a penny in for a pound. "How do you get them out of your head, what they think of you, what they've done to you. I've tried to get away, get away from those memories but..." He trails off.

"But they pull you back, smother you until you feel like your drowning. Until the thought of living your life free from your past is nothing more than a pipe dream." Abby gives him a sad smile.

"Honestly, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I had to get away, out of their influence but that was the easy part. I dug through textbooks, studies, other survivor accounts. Found other people who went through the same Hell I had. I learned which therapy principles had been twisted and used on me and how to undo the self-loathing conditioning that had been placed on me. I wrote letters. Letters to my parents, to my Grandma, to myself. I wrote down every twisted thing that I had been through and then I'd light the letters on fire and watch it all burn away."

"It's not going to happen overnight. It took me years of panic attacks and depression to get to where I am right now and it can still creep up on me. I still write letters when it gets hard to breathe. It can't stop me. I am stronger than my memories and I will be free of them. My parents, my past, all of it. It's just a matter of time."

Jason is silent as he absorbs her story. All the steps she took reaching where she is now. How sure she is that she will be free. That it was just a matter of time. The memories of what had happened to him under Arkham still felt like an impossible obstacle. Like thick heavy iron chains weighing him down, refusing to let him go. Those weren't the only chains holding him down, memories of what had happened in that warehouse and even in Crime Alley had never let go. He also had one more set of chains If he was being honest with himself. The constant disappointment and alienation that he had endured as Robin from all sides wrapped around him just as tightly as any other memory. All of them cutting into him, leaving deep gashes that had never fully healed.

He could escape from a cell in his sleep but this? This was something else entirely.

Jason shudders as sick and cruel laughter rings through his head.

"You saw what happened to me, what he did to me. Do you really think I have any chance of getting _the Joker_ out of my head?"

Abby gives him a shrewd look. "Jason, I watched you fight your way out of Arkham half dead on sheer force of will alone. I _know_ you can get that monster out of your head."

Jason huffs out a laugh in surprise. For once it didn't sound hollow. "Well, that makes one of us."

Abby opens her mouth to say something but gets cut off as her phone starts ringing.

"Oh, what now." She grumbles as she snatches up her phone. "Atwood." She answers sharply.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. "No, I'm not… That's not...Yes... Yes, I'll be right there." She ends the call and drops her head into her hands with a huff.

"Don't tell me they need you to cover another shift," Jason asks in disbelief, that makes the third time this week and she's already working double shifts.

"The glamorous life of a psychiatric intern." She sighs giving her remaining pancakes a mournful look.

"I'll take care of the leftovers, you get ready," Jason says clearing the table. Abby shoots him a grateful look before darting back to her room.

Five minutes later she's reemerged, dressed and wrestling her hair into a messy ponytail. "I'll be back around two, hopefully. Oh and feel free to dig through my textbooks. The red one on the top of the pile is about treating PTSD if you're looking for a place to start."

"I'll think about." He says giving the book in question a wary glance.

She gives him a knowing nod before closing the door behind her. Leaving him alone in the apartment.

Jason takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. It's easier for him to forget that he's not in his cell anymore when Abby's not around. It takes him a moment to steady himself.

He does his usual check of all his injuries, changing out the bandage on his forearm and the burn on his side before starting his workout routine.

He still can't do anything too strenuous, what little muscle mass he has left is seriously atrophied but the muscle memory remains. He can just manage a half hour of drills before his body calls it quits.

He runs a damp washcloth over himself to wash off the sweat, showers still weren't happening, the memories of being waterboarded were just too fresh in his mind. He can't spend much time in front of the mirror either. Joker had spent hours carving messages into his skin.

Jason traces the J-shaped brand on his face. "Dead bird walking" had also been carved into the skin of his chest right below his collarbone. Down and to the right "Ha!Ha!Ha!" was carved into the skin above his hip. Smiley Faces wrapped around his left forearm traveling up his bicep.

A few days ago he had finally worked up the courage to ask Abby what's on his back. She told him that two broken wings stretched down from his shoulders across his entire back.

His fingers tighten around the lip of the sink. Counting breaths until he could think again. He raises his head and looks at his reflection in the mirror where a dead man stares back at him. Eyes sunken and hollow and angry.

Joker hurt him, tortured him, pushed him to the very limits of his endurance but he did not break him. He's battered and bruised. Beaten in every sense of the word but not broken. Robin had died in that warehouse, The Red Hood had died under Arkham, but Jason Todd lives.

He's not the same person he was, he can't be, but he can become something different, stronger.

In a twisted way dying at Joker's hands in Ethiopia was one of the best things that had ever happened to him. It allowed him to travel the world, training and exploring, doing good, to start over. To figure out who he is without the Bat looking over his shoulder. He has another chance to start over, start fresh. Leave behind who he was and discover who he is.

Jason quickly gets dressed and soon finds himself in front of the pile of textbooks that are a permanent fixture next to the couch.

He can do this all he needs is to take that first step.

He picks up the red book on top of the stack and starts reading.


	11. Back From The Dead

There's no message to send any more. Not because of a lack of a message, but because there's no one to send it to. No one he _wants_ to send it to. He doesn't care anymore.

Fingernails claw at his hands and wrists. The pain barely registers as his hands tighten around his target's neck.

No cardboard signs to leave, no heads in duffle bags, nothing big and flashy. Just another dead body, Gotham's full of them.

A lamp goes flying as they crash into a side table. The room is all but destroyed, not a single piece of furniture escaped the battle unscathed.

He's not here to make a statement. That was his mistake last time. He put on a show, tried to get attention, and that ended with a Batarang to the neck. He wanted them to know who he was when his plan finally succeeded. He wanted the Joker dead. He wanted Batman to solve his problems for him.

Fuck that.

Jason hauls both of them around and throws his opponent into the wall.

You want someone dead? You hunt them down and kill them yourself.

Jason lunges forward before his opponent can recover and slams him back into the wall.

The man pinned to the walls suddenly stops struggling. Jason finally realizes that his hood had fallen back during the fight. His opponent's eyes land on the brand before going wide in horror.

"You!"

Jason grins. "Yup."

Snap!

The limp body falls to the ground. Jason takes a step back, breathing hard.

Eight of eight. Rot in Hell you bastards.

During his time under Arkham, he had identified eight guards who acted as Joker's enforcers in Arkham. He had killed three of them during his initial escape and during the last month he had hunted down and killed the rest.

The last one had some idea that something was coming for him, just enough paranoia to not be caught off guard and put up a fight. Four of his buddies had been killed in less than a month. But with no signs of rogue or vigilante involvement, it was written off. Just victims of a robbery gone wrong. It happens every day in Gotham. If anyone bothered to look closer they might have found a connection between the five men. All Arkham guards who disappear from the cameras for hours at a time, but since there's no evidence that these deaths were anything more than day to day Gotham crime no one's going to look any deeper. No one will know the actual reason they died. No one will know that he took revenge on them. No one will know that he's back. Which is the entire point. Leaving behind messages and obvious trails, daring Batman to come after him is how he got into this mess in the first place. Not making that mistake twice.

Each of one of these men made his life a living Hell above and below ground, and now they're dead. That's all that matters. He's not here to make a statement or become a symbol. He's here to get the job done. No mask required.

Jason steps over pieces of broken furniture, making a swift exit out the window and into the alley. He checks to see if the coast is clear before shoving aside the manhole cover he used to get here and drops down into the sewers below.

This is the only way to get around Gotham if you truly want to avoid attention. Stick to the streets or stay underground. Running across rooftops is the fastest way to get around the city but it's also the fastest way to get caught. The trick is to take your time. Move with the crowd and stay away from cameras. It doubles your travel time but right now Jason's got nothing but time.

Moving through the sewers is the slowest way to travel and the most dangerous, but if he had the choice between running into Batman or Killer Croc. He'd take the nine-foot-tall man-phibian with razor teeth and bullet-proof skin any day of the week.

By the time he's done winding his way through miles of tunnels, climbing out of another manhole cover, sneaking in the back door of the building, dodging the few security cameras, and using the spare key that Abby gave him gave him over an hour had passed. He closes the door behind him and kicks off his shoes.

The apartment is empty. Abby's still at work and won't be back until after midnight. He only leaves the apartment when she's at work. As far as she knows he hasn't left her apartment. He always makes sure that he's home with plenty of time to spare. She might suspect something but she hasn't asked him about it.

It's surprising how much this place feels like home, that he thinks of it as home. He's more comfortable living here than he ever was living at Wayne Manor. No, not surprising. Enlightening. What's that saying? Home is where your attempts to escape cease. If that's the case then the Manor was never his home. Just because it was nicer than the Alley doesn't make it home. He should put that on a T-shirt.

Jason laughs under his breath and drops onto the couch, flipping the news on out of habit. Just because he's not active anymore doesn't mean he can risk not knowing what's going on. He listens to the news anchor drone on about the same topics as yesterday and he feels his mind start to wander.

He's been living here for one month, two weeks, and three days. Sometimes Arkham feels so far away, and other days he feels like he never made it out at all.

Over the past month, he had dug through every book in Abby's bookshelf. Within the first week, he had half the books memorized. It got to the point where Abby didn't bother to look anything up anymore, she'd just ask him. It was the most fun he'd had in years. He had always loved learning. A day doesn't go by where he wishes that he had the chance to finish high school, go to college. Pouring over those books reminded him that the dream didn't die with him. He'll never be able to finish high school but he can go to college. Get a degree in anything he wants. Get out of Gotham, get out of the country and go to college. English major with a minor in psych, or maybe he'd dual major. He asked Abby about potential schools and she had stopped by the Gotham U student resource center the next day and brought back a ton of brochures. It was like Christmas morning. He spent the evening comparing schools on her laptop while she updated her evidence binder.

He's not going to quit his 'night job' but he's not going to operate the same way he did before. This time he'll leave no trail. No signs, no messages, just a dead body and no leads. Get in, get the job done, move on.

Like a ghost in the night.

It's strange to think about the future. For the longest time, he couldn't afford to think past the next few days let alone where he wanted to be in a few years. All he could do is focus on his next move in his latest plan.

This is different from the last time he rebuilt himself. After his death, he was so focused on his former life, on getting back to Gotham. It consumed him, gave him tunnel vision. He was obsessed. Now he can't care less about any of that. His old life, his identity as the Red Hood, his identity as Robin? He doesn't want it back, he doesn't want any of it back. He just wants to get out. Move forward, away from this place and the so-called unbreakable family ties that the Bats are so keen to hang him with.

It's fucking liberating.

Jason leans his head back against the couch, tempted to sleep right here when the news he was watching flips to an emergency broadcast.

Jason watches as the headline rolls across the bottom of the screen, processing the words with startling detachment if he's being honest with himself.

Then it cuts to a live feed and Jason feels a grin creep across his face.

It's about time.

* * *

It's too clean.

Clean is never a word Tim thought he would ever use to describe a civil service in Gotham let alone Arkham Asylum but that's the only adjective he has to describe Jason's escape right now.

For the past month, he and Barbara had gone over every detail of Jason's escape from Arkham. Pulled every report, gone through every surveillance feed, looked at that day from every angle. The evidence for his escape was perfect, too perfect. The only thing missing was a bow on top.

Jason's last confirmed location at Arkham was in the cafeteria in line for food when the system went down. Then the riot breaks out, by the time GCPD have the island under control Jason is nowhere to be found and his gear is missing from evidence. The next sure sighting of him is over a year later in the Clocktower where he disappears with just as little trace as the first time. That's everything they know for sure.

Could Jason have done that? Yes. Did he? The trail that Batman followed out of Arkham was circumstantial at best and there are so many gaps in the timeline it can barely count as one.

Tim scans the now finished cell block C from his vantage point. This is supposedly how Jason escaped, through the construction. What they know for certain: A connecting rope on a tarp was cut and re-tied, a pallet had been moved, and another rope was left leading down from a hole in the outer wall to the cliffs. Someone unauthorized was at the construction site. That much is confirmed. Could Jason have escaped through here? Yes. Did he? They have no solid evidence one way or another. Just a trail that went cold as soon as they found it.

Could the construction site have been used by another inmate to escape? Jason was the only missing prisoner so that's not possible. Looking at the evidence there's one of two options. That the original assumption was correct and Jason escaped during the riot through the unfinished C block, or someone made it look like the construction site was Jason's point of escape.

If the second option is true and someone only wanted it to look like Jason escaped. That means that Jason never escaped. That he was in Arkham the entire time.

If they're right if Jason was really held here the entire time then the prime suspect for who held him…

Tim slams his fist into the wall. Joker made it clear that he had unfinished business with Jason. He's more than capable of planning all of this. Who would know how to leave them a false trail better than him? Just because the footage showed that Joker was in his cell at the time of the incident doesn't mean that he had nothing to do with the riot. Just because the log shows that he was in his cell doesn't mean that he was! He's escaped Arkham more times than any other rogue if anyone knows how to circumvent Arkham's systems it the Joker. Why didn't they consider this?

Because Jason had escaped and the search for him took priority. They had bigger things to worry about.

When had Jason become a bigger threat than the Joker? No, not a bigger threat, a more personal one. One Joker knew how to play to his advantage. He knew that they'd drop everything and scour the city. Why would we look for Jason in Arkham, the one place we knew he wasn't?

Tim forces himself to take a deep breath. This is nothing but more assumptions. They don't know any of this for certain. He came here to find proof. One way or another.

If Jason didn't escape and Joker planned the whole thing. Where would he have kept Jason?

Arkham Asylum has been renovated over and over again for over a century. The blueprints for the island are often inaccurate or missing completely. There are dozens of hiding places that don't show up on the blueprints and that's just what they know about. If you knew your way around the island's secrets finding a place to hide Jason would be trivial.

Jason disappeared from the penitentiary, but with old passages running under all of Arkham, it's possible that he was moved to another part of the island. Tim needs more data on where to start looking. Thankfully he has another pair of eyes on the job.

Barbara's voice comes over the coms. "Ok, I think I've found something. There's a supply closet in the Intensive care building that guards disappear in for hours at a time. Could be typical slacking off or the perfect place to hide a secret passage."

Tim scurries out the maintenance hatch leading to the penitentiary roof. Grappling across the grounds. "Got it, on my way to check it out now."

"I'll let you know if I find any other potential hiding spots." Barbara gives a tired sigh. "I don't know what to hope for."

"Neither do I," Tim admits. "The truth?"

She lets out a humorless laugh. "The truth." She agrees. "We owe Jason that much."

"If our theory is correct we owe him a lot more than that." He says grimly as he lands on the top of the Intensive care building.

"If. No more guessing. Go find us some evidence. One way or another."

Tim dropped down into the vents that run through the intensive care building. Within a few minutes, he's reached the supply closet that Oracle mentioned.

He nudges open the door and slips inside. At first glance, it's your typical unorganized supply closet, but stopping at first glances is how they got into this mess in the first place.

A quick scan of the room reveals boxes of cleaning supplies. Various mops and gloves are scattered through the room. The only piece of furniture in the room is a cabinet.

Tim starts checking the room, scanning it thoroughly with detective vision then searching through every box and bucket. He digs through the mostly empty cabinet before going over cracks in the walls with his fingers.

Half an hour later he has yet to find any sign of a secret passage or any clue to where Jason was held.

Just as he's about to radio Oracle for the next location something catches his eye.

The cabinet isn't just bolted to the wall, it's practically fused to the wall.

He runs a gloved hand down the seam where the cabinet meets the wall. There's no space between the cabinet and the wall. Like it was welded into the wall.

Tim opens the cabinet again, taking in the few supplies and space between the shelves and the door. Like someone could close the door and comfortably stand inside the cabinet.

Tim steps into the cabinet and closes the door behind him. He hears a faint click sound when the door shuts completely. He searches the cabinet for the source of the sound and finds a button under one of the shelves that hadn't been there when the doors were open. Upon inspection, it is revealed to have been hidden behind a plate of metal that slid open when the door closed.

Tim rescans the interior of the cabinet with detective vision. Now that the button wasn't behind the panel it appeared on the interface but whatever mechanism that was used to reveal the button was still absent.

Tim crack the door open and watches as the metal sides back over the button. The heads-up alert vanishes the second the plate click back into place.

The only thing that could disrupt detective vision is a military grade frequency absorbing coating that's been electromagnetically charged...

This mechanism was built to be invisible. Someone built this with hiding it from Gotham vigilantes in mind.

There's no way that's a coincidence.

Tim shuts the door behind him and presses the button. The back of the cabinet pulls back and to the side revealing a set of stairs heading down into the darkness. The sound of dripping water echoes just out of sight. It's just loud enough that he should have been able to hear it from the other side.

Sound-proof too. Whoever built this entrance knew what they were doing.

Tim silently creeps down the stairs relying on the night vision in his mask to see in the pitch black. The tunnel is old, really old. First built when the Asylum was still a manor old.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs and static explodes from his earpiece. He instinctively pulls the piece from his ear wincing at the pain.

A quick check of his gear reveals that he's being jammed. No signals are reaching him and Detective mode is reduced to a blur.

Tim grimly deactivates his mask, his night vision isn't dependent on a constant signal so he can still navigate, but the resources used to secure an abandoned tunnel under Arkham send his already wary state into high alert.

This place isn't just well protected. Whoever did this not only knew how they worked but they built countermeasures specifically designed to counter Bat-Tech. Worse, they did it all undetected.

Even if Jason wasn't held here the fact that something like this place exists at all is alarming.

It takes a few minutes of exploration but he finally comes across a heavy iron door.

He pushes the door open and peers inside.

The room is completely made of stone His eyes are immediately drawn to the broken chains attached to the far wall, a slight silver glint in the dark against all the ruddy dark red and brown stains that stain the stone floor. Parts of the stone floor is blackened, burned he releases as the patterns register in his head, black lines lance out from a central point almost like lightning, caused by electric discharge. The floor is also eaten away in some places like someone dropped a bottle of acid on the ground.

There are little grooves carved into the stone of the floor and walls like someone had been clawing at them...

His mind begins to shut down as he realizes what he's looking at.

 _No_

He just resists the urge to gag as the smell hits him.

 _Nonononono_

Those claw marks could easily fit Jason's hands.

 _I didn't want to be right._

He doesn't need detective vision to put together what had happened here. A part of him wishes that he did. He wishes that the suffering that had been carved into these walls wasn't so blatant, so obvious, Joker all but signed his name.

Tim forces himself to take a step into the cell. Detective work now, feel later.

He starts with the chains, new compared to the rest of the cell. Clearly worn now. The rust colored stain of blood had all but sunk into the metal. They hadn't been unlocked they had been broken. The raw strength required to pull that off isn't easy to achieve even with factoring in muscle fatigue. The unique locking mechanism was designed to reset tumblers to a new pattern if tampered with. Only a certain magnetized key could open them.

Tim feels the horror build as the familiar design begins to sink in.

These cuffs are only used on Gotham rogues, Arkham staff do not have access to them, the GCDP does not have access to them, only the family does.

These were the cuffs that were used to transport Jason to Arkham.

Joker used the cuffs that Tim had helped design to chain Jason to a wall.

Tim presses his hands against his eyes and fights the urge to vomit. He doesn't want to look at the rest of the room. He doesn't need to. It's already burned itself into his mind. He can see it all playing out in front of him like every other crime scene reconstruction.

A part of him tries to say that they won't know for sure if Jason had been the one held here until they run tests on the dried blood to find out for sure whose it is. That he should wait for concrete proof instead of assuming the identity of the owner of those claw marks but the evidence doesn't lie. Someone was held and tortured under Arkham for God knows how long. Even if by some miracle it wasn't Jason it doesn't change the fact that this horrific event happened in the one place it shouldn't have been able to.

On the other hand, if he's right if it was Jason who was down here, if it was Jason who endured hell at the hands of his murderer because of them, because of their miscalculations and assumptions…

God, how does he fix this? Is there any fixing this? Should he even try? Should he even tell the others what he found? If they knew what had really happened to Jason they'd try to find him, they'd hunt him down to the ends of the earth which would make things infinitely worse. Cornering him to try to help fix the damage they caused from their last attempt to help him? Jason's reaction would be biblical. Add to the fact that there's a high probability that Bruce and Dick would try to institutionalize him again regardless of Jason wishes. No, he can't tell the others. He'll be damned if he's going to be silent and let this happen again.

He'll go back to the Clocktower and tell Barbara what he found. There's no way he's putting this on the coms. Once he's filled her in they'll find Jason without alerting the others to what they're up to and figure out a way to contact him without backing him into a corner. Find out what he wants. Then they'll go from there.

Just as this plan finishes forming in his head. The lights in the cell flick on.

Tim's eyes snap shut as the sudden burst of light overpowers his night vision blinding him. Then a blow to the head sends him tumbling to the floor.

The night vision automatically turns off as it registers the change in light and his vision clears. He freezes as his eyes focus on the gun pointed at his head.

The guard holding the gun grins. "I must be my lucky day, Joker said to keep an eye on Hood's old cell but I never dreamed I would find a bat sneaking around down here. Now when Joker gets back I'll give him you and collect that sweet reward."

Hood's old cell? Tim's heart sinks at the confirmation. At the same time, a surge of rage flows through him as he glares up at the guard.

"You knew that Red Hood was down here." Tim grits out. "You knew that Joker was torturing him?"

The guard shoots him an equally confused and amused look. "Yeah, all of the guards on Joker's payroll did. Since when do you bats care about what happens to him? Hell, since when do you care about Arkham inmates. You never cared before."

A chill runs down Tim's spine as he processes the implications of his words. They never cared about the inmates? They never cared about what was happening to the inmates?

The idea that this bloodstained cell is just the tip of the iceberg chills him to his very core.

The guard seems to realize that he's said too much and take a step back into the doorway, gun still trained on Tim's head.

"Alright that's enough, we're going to wait right here until Joker comes back and if you try anything I swear to GUHK!"

The guard's body seizes, then falls forward onto the stone floor with a satisfying thwack. Tim jumps to his feet as a woman in a lab coat steps over the guard's body. The guard's taser held loosely in her latex-gloved hands.

"You're the second Robin I've found down here." She says as she steps around the guard's unconscious body. She kicks the gun into a corner and places the taser next to him. She straightens up, removes the latex gloves from her hands and pockets them. "Although, you're in much better shape than Jason was."

Tim's mind screeches to a halt then goes into overdrive. She knows Jason's name, she knows that he was Robin!

"What are you talking about? Who are you?" Tim demands, stamping down the panic building inside him. How much does she know, how long has she known it, and what has she done with that information? She could hold all the answers or be the end of everything.

"You want to know what happened down here, right under your nose? Come find me after you deal with what's happening above ground. Judging from the GNN Emergency Broadcast you're going to need all hands on deck. I can guarantee Jason's going to be right in the middle of it if he's not already, but I seriously doubt you'll be able to keep up with him. He's been waiting for this chance since the day your boss handed him to Joker on a silver platter."

The woman carefully steps around the unconscious guard on her way out of the cell.

"Just give me five minutes to get back to my post before you head out. I can't tell you anything if I'm dead." With that, she disappears down the tunnel.

For a moment Tim stands there in stunned silence. The events of the last ten minutes playing over and over in his head. He smashes the urge to immediately head to the surface. Whoever that woman is she's his best lead to find Jason and figure out what's really been happening at Arkham. He can't risk anything happening to her.

The minutes drag on in that bloodstained room but finally, they pass. He makes a beeline for the tunnel exit. The second he exits the supply closet Barbara's voice immediately flares to life in his ear.

"Where have you been!? I've been trying to reach you for the past ten minutes!"

"I found some tunnels under Arkham and the signal cut out. What's happening?" Tim tries to keep his voice steady even as he races to the roof.

"Joker's robbing the Wayne charity gala and- Oh my God. Tim, Jason's there!"


	12. Let The Sparks Fly

The Wayne Charity Gala. For what charity? You'd never know, It never makes the front page. It doesn't have the chance, buried under page after page of gossip and stock numbers. No one comes to these things to help anyone. Sure, some well-vetted charity gets a very generous check at the end of the night but that's not why Gotham's wealthiest cuts those checks. They want their names in the paper, good publicity, and, most importantly, a chance to make a good impression with Gotham's most prominent and influential family.

It's a long night of smiles, handshaking and double talk. It's only out of years of practice and patience that Bruce has lasted this long without jumping out a window. He's dealt with the Danvers' and the Hamilton's. The Tucker's are clearly angling for another investment and the Atwoods are lingering at his peripheral.

A quick glance around the room reveals Dick chatting with some of the models in attendance, Damian is moving around the room avoiding the most aggressive matchmaking mothers, and Cass is somehow appearing at one food table only to disappear from view and resurface at another one.

Tim is out patrolling but should be here later tonight. Once that happens one of them can slip out and Bruce won't be the only one dealing with the more business-oriented guests.

Bruce excuses himself from a gaggle of admirers but he doesn't get far before Alfred appears at his shoulder, a tray of champagne in hand.

"Thinking about Master Jason again, sir?"

"It's been over a month since he resurfaced and we still have nothing. The longer he's out there the more damage he'll do." Bruce says under his breath as he snags a champagne flute filled with ginger ale. "After what he did to Barbara who knows what he'll try next."

"He did protect her from the blast." Alfred reasoned. "Jason has never tolerated collateral damage, I believe it's safe to say that she was not the target."

Bruce shakes his head. "Even if she wasn't harmed this was still an attack on all of us. On our ability to operate. He also attacked just as the Arkham incident was wrapping up. When we were stretched thin. Probably a dry run for whatever he's planning since he's gone off the grid again. He'll most likely make his move on the tail of the next major event. We have to find him and stop him before then."

"You say that like you know his target."

"He's only ever had one. Jason's coming after me. Just because he didn't hurt Barbara doesn't mean that he won't go after anyone else." His eyes briefly land on Damian. "He's trying to show me that since I couldn't protect him I have no chance of protecting anyone else. He'll try to take away everything I hold dear to make me pay for his death, for failing him. I can't let this revenge plot go on any longer. I have to stop him."

"That line of thinking is a trite self-centered, don't you think?"

Bruce glances at Alfred in surprise but the butler continues on. "Compare the way he was operating when he first returned to Gotham to the last year. His pattern of activity has changed completely. He hasn't returned to his old territory or any of his old safehouses. Isn't it possible that he's put aside his previous goals, at least temporarily, and has focused on something else?"

Bruce gives Alfred a sad smile. "I wish that were true Alfred. God, I wish that were true."

The sound of the ballroom doors slamming open cut off Alfred's response.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of Gotham's high and mighty penny pinchers. We are tonight's entertainment!" Joker waltzes into the center of the ballroom as at least 30 of his goons fan out, taking control of the room.

Guests stifle shrieks and crowd together. Dick falls in beside Bruce with Damian a beat behind. Cass appears on his other side. All of them have clearly come to the same conclusion he just did. Too many cameras, too far from the exits. They can't leave, they can't even move. Just another guest held at gunpoint waiting for help. Hopefully, Red Robin and Spoiler get here soon.

Commissioner Gordon steps forward. "What are you doing here Joker?"

Jokers turns his twisted smile towards Gordon. "Oh, don't worry commish. We're just here for the photo op. There have been so many rumors floating around about yours truly after last month's party. That I'm a mindless Titan monster, that I'm sick, that I'm dying!" Joker laughs.

"So I'm here to put Gotham's poor worried masses to rest. I, your loving uncle Joker, is in tip-top shape and ready for my come back tour. I think getting back to basics is a good start, don't you?"

Joker turns to the room, arms spread wide as he addresses the guests. "So without further ado! We're taking donations for to the help-Joker-put-on-the-show-of-a-lifetime fund! So please open your hearts and your purse strings! Every penny counts you know."

He signals to his men. "Go on boys! Find us some willing volunteers!"

Joker's men start to move through the crowd only to stop cold as the skylight above shatters, a shadow falls through the air. Glass and bullets rain down as the guests run for cover. Within seconds all of Joker's men are down, some clutching various limbs with others not moving at all.

The figure lands with a solid thud in the center of the room.

Bruce feels his heart stop.

No. Why now?

"Sorry, I'm late." Red Hood says as he gets to his feet "Guess my invitation got lost in the mail. Change of address and all that."

Joker's grin goes from maniac to downright demonic. "Well we can't have that now, can we hoody? Next time I'll be sure to deliver it _personally_."

"I doubt that we both know that there's not going to be a next time," Hood says casually as he turns to face Joker.

Bruce feels his blood run cold. Next to him Dick tenses. Damian whispers something but Bruce doesn't hear it. He's to busy watching the nightmare unfolding in front of him. His son is facing down the Joker and all he can do is watch.

Joker's eyes narrow at the implication. "Someone's confident, and here I thought I beat that out of you last time." Joker's demeanor suddenly changes. "Oh well! Third time's the charm right bird boy?"

"With your track record I doubt it," Hood says dryly. "Or did you forget that I'm 2 and 0 against you."

Joker's expression darkens but Bruce isn't paying attention to him. Something's off with Jason. He's not acting like himself.

Before Bruce could analyze it further Joker responds.

"So hoody's convinced himself that to try his hand at revenge again. You don't really think that's going to work, do you? That you'll be free of me? I left my mark on you birdy and it's never coming off."

"You actually think this is about me, that I'm here for me?" Jason laughs, shaking his head. "Wow, you have so not been paying attention."

Jason takes a step forward. "This isn't for the victims, the hundreds who lie still in their graves. They're at peace, I was at peace. This is for the survivors, the people who walk around this city carrying the scars you gave them, who lost loved ones to you, who kept the bullet that was pulled out of their spine to remind them of what they overcame. The ones who are still fighting. Every. Single. Day. This isn't for the freak of nature who couldn't stay dead. This is for them."

Time seems to slow as Bruce watches Jason charge Joker. Crossing the distance between them in a matter of seconds. Joker grapples with Jason, his hand clamping down of the unarmored gap between Jason's glove and jacket. Electricity visibly lances up Jason arm from Joker's joy buzzer but Jason doesn't falter. He drives a syringe into the back of Joker's neck and the twisted grin goes slack.

Joker's body falls limp to the ground, silence echoes through the room as everyone stares at The clown's unmoving form. Then the silence is broken as another figure falls through the broken skylight.

Red Robin lands a few feet away from Red Hood. Bruce's immediate worry turns to confusion when Tim doesn't move towards Jason. He hasn't even reached for his Bo-staff. Just stands there with his hands at his sides completely non-threatening. Like he's waiting for something.

"He's not dead, they aren't either," Hood says matter of factly gesturing to the unmoving bodies of Joker's thugs. "They won't be walking anytime soon, or ever, but they're still breathing. That's all that matters, right?"

If Bruce hadn't been watching the exchange closely he might have missed the way Tim suppresses a wince at Jason's words.

"Not always," Tim admits, taking a step closer, being careful to keep his body language non-threatening and his hands at his sides. "Just because someone's breathing doesn't mean that they're alive."

Dick makes a noise of confusion. Jason tilts his head, giving Tim an unreadable look hidden by his helmet.

After a moment Jason huffs out a laugh, "Nice to know at least one of you is still living up to the detective part of the job description." _What?_ With that Jason steps over Joker's body and walks past Tim until he's right under the hole he made in the skylight. Tim makes no move to stop him. Bruce grinds his teeth in frustration, what is he doing?!

Jason turns back to face Tim. "Hey, do me a favor. When Batman finds out about this and tries to hunt me down tell him not to bother." Jason reaches up and hits a button on the jaw of his helmet before pulling it off entirely.

The cloth hood of his jacket is still obscuring most of Jason's face but before Bruce can try to get a better look at his son's face Jason speaks again.

"The Red Hood is dead."

Jason throws the helmet to the floor. It makes a hollow noise as it skids across the floor. Tim sticks out his foot to stop it from colliding with Joker's body.

With that Jason grapples up to the roof and disappears from view.

Tim... Tim doesn't make any move to follow Jason. He crouches down next to Joker's body and presses two finger's to the side of the clown's neck.

"You're not going to go after him?" Commissioner Gordon demands.

"We've got bigger problems than him now. He gave Joker an Air embolism." Red Robin says straightening up.

"A what?"

"Hood injected a bubble of air between the vertebrae in Joker's neck. He's permanently paralyzed, he can't move or speak. I doubt he ever will again. He's completely conscious but he's trapped inside. Once the word gets out that The Joker is basically a vegetable-"

"There's going to be a power struggle for control of his territory, Jesus." Gordon curses, "You think Hood did this to take over Joker's gang?"

"I doubt it, this didn't feel like a hostile takeover. It felt personal. If Hood does start making moves we'll deal with him and anyone else trying to fill the vacuum, but right now the priority is putting Joker back where he belongs and getting ready for the war that's about to start."

The GCPD finally breaks down the doors and the ballroom descends into organized chaos as the Joker and his goons are rounded up.

No one notices that Bruce Wayne has disappeared from the crowd.

* * *

Selina turns off the news coverage and leans back in bed. "He actually pulled it off."

"You sound surprised," Talia says dryly, lounging next to her.

"I knew he had it in him but taking down Joker at the Wayne Charity Ball in front of Bruce, Dick, Damian, and Cassandra and all they can do is watch? You have to admit our boy has style."

Talia grins. "That he does."

Selina curls into Talia with a sigh. "What are the chances that we're going to have another visitor demanding to know where Jason is before the sun is up?"

"An almost certainty."

"So we shouldn't waste time." Selina purrs.

Talia grins. "I have a few ideas."

Selina knows that look. "Oh, yea? Like wha- Mmmmm."

Words are overrated anyway.

Tim hands off Joker to the GCPD for transfer back to Arkham. He glances around the ballroom unsurprised to see that Bruce has already disappeared and that Dick, Damian, and Cass are all stealthing for the exits.

Tim activates his com and grapples up to the roof. "Where is he?"

"Hood or B?" Oracle asks. Tim had filled her in on what he found under Arkham while he was running across Gotham. There's no humor in her voice, only steel.

"Batman, I have to stop him from going after Jason. Nightwing, Robin, and Black Bat still here but they're already heading out."

"I'll worry about them, Batman is… Damn it. He's already suited up, he's a mile west of your position headed south."

"And Hood?"

"Half a rooftop in front of him."

Tim starts running.

* * *

A Batarang embeds itself into the wall in front of Jason before he's even two blocks away from the gala. He doesn't falter, jumping from one rooftop to the next sending gravel flying as he ran. Putting as much distance between him and the Bat.

"Jason stop!"

The words don't stick, they don't even land. Bruce is ten feet behind him chasing him through the city and none of that phases him. A month ago he'd be curled up in a ball about to put a bullet in his head. Now he doesn't care.

More importantly, any Robin conditioning he had is now gone. That immediate instinct to stop, to follow orders is gone. It should have died with Robin but like any good conditioning, it stuck around. He's had to fight against it for years and now it's gone.

He should send Abby flowers once he finally gets out of here, and Harley too if he's being honest.

"Not happening," Jason says dryly, not caring if his pursuer could hear him or not, as he makes another jump. Swinging off a pipe to get the extra distance he needs. His right arm burns from getting hit by Joker's joy buzzer but it holds.

He hits the ledge and keeps running, not once looking back.

There are so many things he wants to say.

 _Why are you even chasing me, huh? Joker's alive. I didn't break your precious rules or is this about Barbara? If you think she needs you to protect her from me you're out of your mind._

 _Don't tell me that this is about getting me the help I need? Sorry to break it to you but I already got it from someone actually qualified in treating PTSD. Newsflash, there's a difference between someone being insane and someone being who they are and refusing to be twisted into something they're not!_

 _For the longest time, all I wanted was your approval. I wanted you to be proud of me. I wanted to be your son!_

 _Now I'm done with you. You are nothing to me. Just because you were a better father figure than Willis doesn't mean that you were good. There's no prize for not being a drunk domestic abuser you self-righteous prick!_

 _Right now you're ranking is holding steady at one Sheila Haywood. I might not know much about family but in my book family doesn't give family over to psychotic clowns!_

 _Not that you know any of that cause you buried me next to her! I'm surprised I didn't crawl out of my grave sooner just to get away from her._

 _She's not my Mom and you sure all hell aren't my Dad. That piece of paper tucked away in your archives is as meaningless as me sharing her blood._

 _Tell that demon you can't be bothered to parent that he's got it wrong. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, you people aren't my family and even if we were being family doesn't solve anything! I doubt any of you know what that word means anyway._

 _I am who I am. I am my own man. I am Jason Peter Todd and you will never be able to hurt me ever again._

But Jason doesn't say any of that. He doesn't stop, he doesn't slow down. He keeps running.

His feet hit the next roof, sending gravel flying as he skids around the next corner. The Bat is still on his tail right behind him. He won't be able to shake him. He knew that he prepared.

He's won't let Bruce catch him.

He reaches for the device in his coat.

He'll die first.

He hits the button.

The rooftop explodes.

* * *

Batman dives to the side as bits of brick and debris rain down from the explosion. His ears ring as the cloud of dust begins to dissipate. The rooftop is torn up, brick and gravel are scattered everywhere, it's still intact but barely. If that explosion had been any stronger then the roof would have collapsed.

Worse Jason is nowhere in sight.

His immediate panic is quickly quelled as he scans the remains of the roof. No blood spatter or signs of injury. Jason must have escaped the blast unharmed.

The explosion didn't start from a single point, the pattern of destruction clearly shows four points of detonation at the corners of the rooftop directed inward.

The explosives were pre-planted. Designed to send up debris and smoke rather than a deadly shockwave...

It's a distraction.

"Batman!"

Red Robin lands on the roof next to him.

"We need to fall back. I have new information on Jason-"

"Later," Bruce growls trying to step around Tim only for Tim to block him.

"I can't let you do that. This is important."

"He's getting away!"

"He _got_ away. We can't go after him now. The situation has changed."

Batman looms over Tim. "Get out of my way."

Tim squares his shoulder and stands his ground. "Or you'll do what? Fire me? Nightwing already did that. Or are you talking about my position at WE, does that mean that you'll actually be going to your own meetings now? Because I would pay to see that."

Red Robin's response stops him cold. Tim rarely digs his heel in like this, he rarely gets involved in family arguments anymore. He doesn't even get into fights with Damian anymore… No, he just got better at avoiding them altogether, avoiding other members of the family. When had he started avoiding them? Bruce can count the number of times he's talked to Tim about anything, work-related or not, for the past month on one hand. The last time he was in the Batcave was the night Barbara was attacked. If Tim is purposely hunting him down and forcing a confrontation then something is really wrong.

Bruce finally looks at Tim, actually looks at him for the first time this night. He knows that expression, the icy calm demeanor hiding solid steel underneath. The same look that he had seen Tim aim at various WE board members when they're being difficult just for the sake of being difficult or refusing to see what's right in front of them. The look he gives someone when he is 110% done with them and is ready to destroy them.

He's wearing that look now because he's learned something about Jason?

This is bad.

"You said that the situation has changed."

Tim's expression doesn't so much as flicker. "Tonight, less than an hour before Joker stormed the gala, I found new evidence about where Jason was for the past year. That evidence changes everything. I sent it over to Oracle on my way to the gala. She should have it all organized by now. The others are already at the Clocktower for the briefing."

Something's not right. Tim is stopping him from following Jason because he discovered where Jason had been for the past year? If finding out where Jason was has Tim on edge like this…

Trepidation begins to pool in his stomach. What happened to Jason?

"Tim. Where was he?"

Tim's expression somehow gets colder.

"Arkham."

* * *

So the kid _did_ manage to put the pieces together.

Jason doesn't move an inch. He's huddled in his spider hole hidden among the rubble not even five meters from where Red Robin and Batman are standing. Criminals never look up, Bats never look down, not really. Some things never change.

The silence stretches on. Finally, he hears the sound of a grapple and the sound of a heavy cape taking off into the night. A second grapple sounds a beat after leaving a much lighter audio footprint.

Jason carefully crawls out of his hiding spot. Keeping low as he watches the two figures retreat across the rooftops.

He can't help but grin as he watches them disappear from view.

"Guess there is some hope for Gotham after all. Nice going kid."

Jason takes off into the night.

* * *

Abby kicks the door of her apartment shut behind her. Her shoes land in a heap next to the couch as she debates whether or not she should even bother to try to make it to her bed. At this stage of exhaustion, even the thinly carpeted floor is starting to look heavenly.

Arkham had been buzzing for hours after what had gone down at the Wayne Gala. The entire island had been put into lockdown and the Max Security infirmary had been turned into a temporary cell for Joker until his old cell could be outfitted with the appropriate medical equipment.

Of course, she had been saddled with supervising Joker's return despite the fact that she was an intern. Dr. Mayweather, the senior psychiatric staff on shift, had only started at Arkham last week and was clearly out of their element so Abby had stepped up and spent the next three hours running around Arkham until the next shift took over.

Abby's about to cut her losses and collapse on the couch when something catches her eye. There's a piece of paper folded up on the kitchen table with her name written across it.

She picks it up and opens it.

 _Abby,_

 _By the time you get done with your shift, I'll be long gone. I'm sorry I had to leave this goodbye to a letter but I'm about to go do something really stupid and this is probably my only chance to say thank you. I don't know what would have happened to me if you hadn't been there. If you hadn't taken those insane risks to help me. I don't know who I would have become. I don't think I would have liked that person. Hell, I was never really a fan of who I was before… Well, before my identity was brutally shattered for the second time in my, for lack of a better word, life. I've been hating myself for so long. Walking down this path because I thought that I had no other option. That there was no going back, just because I was told that once I crossed that line that there was no going back. For the first time in my life, I actually don't care anymore. For my entire life, I've been seen as the problem child. Regardless of what I did. I could have done a complete 180, I could have followed the rules for the rest of my life and it wouldn't change how the world sees me. I'll always be a dangerous, destructive, ticking time bomb ready to blow. There is no going back, not because of a slippery slope that I was told I was destined to fall down. But because as far as they were concerned I was as good as fallen. I was never one of them in the first place._

 _I've never had a place where I could think, really think about who I am or what I've done without falling prey to my demons. But you never let them take me, every time it felt that I was being pulled under you were there helping me fight to stay afloat. In the past, when I was drowning there was no shortage of people willing to shove my head back under the water. Telling me to accept my reality, that I was wrong, that I was damaged so there was no point in trying to be a hero. You'll never be a hero. But I was, I helped people, I followed the rules. I was a hero, I was good, but it was already decided that I wasn't and would never be so nothing I did was good enough. And that will always be true, no matter what I do it will never be good enough for them. So I'm going to do whatever the hell I want. Like right now, this is a really stupid idea that they're going to make a million, probably wrong, assumptions about and I don't care. I'm ending this today, one way or another._

 _Thank you, for helping me save myself from my demons. You are hope in that hopeless place, don't let anyone tell you otherwise._

 _-J_

 _P.S. To the nosy, overbearing, holier than thou Bat that somehow got their hands on this private letter. If you go after Abby, the person who nursed me back to health, who helped me finally open up and come to terms with what happened to me at that monster's hands, who risked being caught by the Joker and you to help someone she didn't even know, I'm telling Alfred and God help you all._

Abby wipes the tears from her eyes as she finishes reading the letter. She's going to miss him. A part of her knew that once she got home he wouldn't be there. After everything that went down at the gala, he probably had to make a run for the city limits. Waiting around to say goodbye wasn't an option.

I know that you're not looking for peace but I hope you find some happiness. Goodbye Jason and Godspeed.

"Miss Atwood."

Abby spins around to find none other than the Batman standing in the middle of her apartment. The rage that sings through her is less of a surprise than the complete lack of fear at his sudden appearance.

"We need to talk."

Abby sets the letter down on the table, feeling herself stand a little taller as she stares him down. She knows when someone's trying to intimidate her. She knew they would find her, even if she hadn't made contact with Red Robin under Arkham she would have gotten a visit sooner or later, she prepared for this.

Without saying a word Abby turns and goes to her bookshelf and pulls out all the evidence she accumulated over the past year on what's happening in Arkham. Binder in hand she walks over and sets it on the coffee table before sitting on the couch facing Batman. Hands folded neatly in her lap, head held high.

"Yes, we do."

* * *

.

.

.

.

.

.

"You have reached the phone of Alfred Pennyworth. I'm not able to answer the phone right now. Please leave your message after the tone."

*BEEP*

"Hey Al, It's me. I made it out of the city. No one's on my tail but I'm sure that's going to change soon. I wanted to say goodbye in person but that's not a risk I can take right now. Which is why I'm leaving a message on your day phone instead of calling on the coms. I'm leaving Gotham, and I won't be back anytime soon. I wanted to ask you a favor, not for me, for a friend of mine. She's helped me out a lot this past month and I'm afraid that they'll go after her to get to me. I know you want to believe that they wouldn't do that but from where I'm sitting nothing's sacred anymore. Not even you. I don't want a civilian, one of the few good people in Gotham, to suffer simply because she's an easy target and they can't find me. She doesn't deserve that, no one does."

"Tim managed to put together where I disappeared to over a year ago. I'm not surprised, he's the only one of us who was actually worthy of the title. I think he might actually be starting to realize it too. Kid's got backbone, you should have heard him standing up to Bruce. Like he's finally starting to realize what he's worth. I'm guessing you and Babs had something to do with that, God knows Bruce and Dick didn't. To busy seeing what they expect to see instead of what's right in front of them. Anyway, the place where I was... it wasn't a cakewalk but I survived. It's what I'm good at. It wasn't your fault, none of it."

"This is the last time you'll hear from me for a while, or ever. I don't know right now. I've got the rest of my life ahead of me and the world at my feet. I think I'm going to live."

"Goodbye."

*click*

FIN


	13. From the Ashes you rise

Part 1:

Two Years Later:

Abby stares down at the diploma in her hands. Finally, after all the long nights, oceans of red tape, and close calls at Arkham it's done. She actually did it. She made it!

Other graduates and their families mill around the slowly emptying stadium, still buzzing with the post-graduation ceremony high. There's no family here to congratulate her, even if they were she'd be rapidly calculating escape routes and trying to figure out what angle they were playing now. Now being able to find her parents in the crowd is a relief.

She follows the crowd out, dropping off her gown but wearing her cap with pride. She had spent hours on the design. The image of a phoenix rising from the ashes is bejeweled onto the surface of her cap.

She finally reaches the street and is mentally preparing herself for the long walk back to her apartment when she hears a voice behind her.

"So it's Dr. Atwood now?"

She spins around to see a familiar form leaning against the wall of a nearby building.

"Jason!" She yells as she tackles him. His arms wrap around her as he picks her up and spins her around.

They're both laughing as he finally sets her back on her feet. She pulls back to get a good look at him. He looks so much more alive then he did two years ago. He's regained lost muscle mass and the sickly pale pallor is gone from his skin. A nondescript bandage covers up the brand on his face and he has a few more scars but he looks good.

He looks happy.

"Jason what are you doing here? I thought you left Gotham for good?" No matter how happy she is to see him he left for a reason.

He grins. "You really thought I'd miss your graduation? I wouldn't miss this for the world. I'm here to celebrate my big sister getting her degree. Anyone who has a problem with that can go brood on a gargoyle."

Abby laughs, holding onto his arm to steady herself. "Man, I've missed you."

"Right back atcha." He offers her his arm. "Now, there's a deli down the street from here that's not a pretentious as it seems and I'm buying."

She loops her arm through his. "Now, how can I say no to that?"

Half an hour later they're sitting outside said deli. Abby's half-way through her sandwich and Jason's just starting his third when Jason suddenly goes still before closing his eyes in annoyance.

Jason sets down his sandwich and leans back in his chair. "Are you going to lurk all day?"

Tim steps out of the nearby alley. "Sorry, cornering you usually doesn't end well."

"Yeah, tell your boss that." Jason sighs, "What are you doing here? Besides interrupting lunch."

"I came to give you a warning, wait no- that's not what- I don't-" Tim sighs. "Can I start over?"

Abby smothers her laughter and pushes out a chair with her foot. Tim drops into it gratefully. Jason can feel the familiarity in their actions. So they know each other, interesting.

Tim tries again. "Not a warning. I came to give you a heads up."

Jason closes his eyes. "The rest of the belfry knows I'm here, huh?"

Tim actually looks apologetic. "Alfred threatened to stop making pastries for a month if anyone tries to hunt you down but I doubt that's going to stop Bruce or Dick from trying to find you. At best it will only buy you some time."

None of this is news to Jason. Tim being willing to warn him about the rest of the Bats and willing to use names in front of Abby, that is news. Just how involved with them did she get after he left? "So you're here to tell me to run, is that it?"

"Yeah, like that would work." Tim shakes his head. "I'm just here to give you the lay of the land. Barbara's keeping an eye on you but she's not going to contact you unless you reach out first or it's an emergency. Steph and Cass will most likely leave you alone and Damian might try to challenge you if he runs into you but they aren't about to track you down. Bruce and Dick on the other hand? They might not be actively hunting you now but once night falls it'll be a different story. They've been trying to find you for the past two years, ever since..." Tim looks away.

"Ever since they realized they gave me to the Joker." Jason finishes for him.

Tim nods. "I know that words don't hold a lot of weight with you and 'I'm sorry' doesn't even begin to cover it if they did. I don't expect you to trust me or anything I say but if you need anything while you're in town I'm here if you need me."

Jason watches him closely. Tim, to all appearances, seems sincere but who knows how long that will last.

"You know there's very little chance of me taking you up on that."

Tim's not surprised by his response. "I know, I just needed to say it."

The silence stretched on until Tim glances over at Abby. "Congratulations by the way."

"Thank you." She says happily. "Have you gotten around to picking your classes for next semester? I have some recommendations if you're planning on taking more psych classes."

Jason glances between them. "So you two actually know each other outside of your night jobs?"

"Something like that," Abby says looking over at Tim, the corner of her mouth ticks up in amusement. "He hunted me down on campus and introduced himself."

Tim actually laughs. "I wanted to meet the woman who told B to either be Batman or find someone who can."

Jason dropped his sandwich. "You did not!"

Abby just shrugs, "It needed to be said. I understand that the situation made it impossible to remove bias from the decision-making process completely but the evidence clearly states that he didn't even try. Add the continuous lack of oversight at Arkham, the one place that should be under the highest scrutiny, the level of negligence is astounding and beyond unacceptable."

Abby glances over at Jason, "He's lucky the consequences weren't more severe."

Jason grimaces. "He's lucky you were there or they would have been."

"He's not acting like it," Tim says dryly. "After you took down Joker he scoured the planet trying to find you. He has an entire network dedicated to tracking you down."

"I noticed," Jason deadpans. "I'm guessing it picked me up the second I set foot in Gotham?"

"Lit up like a Christmas Tree. All of your known aliases coming in on every mode of transportation, nice touch." Tim says in amusement.

Abby's phone cut off Jason response.

Abby glances at the caller ID and sighs. "Atwood." She closes her eyes. "Again? How did- I'm not-" She sighs. "I'll be right there." She drops her phone on the table with a huff.

"You're kidding me, again?" Tim asks. "Can't they run Arkham without you?"

"High staff turnover, especially now with the increased attention on Arkham since you guys started cleaning house. It will be a while until things settle down."

Abby digs her train pass out of her purse and glances at Jason. "I know the situation is beyond complicated but can you at least try not to set off world war three until I'm off shift?"

"If they don't start something I won't finish it," Jason says polishing off the rest of his sandwich.

"That's all I ask, see you tonight." She says before disappearing into the rest of the commuters.

Jason watches her fade into the crowd before turning back to Tim.

"So, are you still at WE or is B going to his own meetings now?"

Tim whips around to face him, eyes wide. "What?"

"You dared him to fire you, remember?"

"Of course I remember! How do you know about it?!" Tim stops. "You were-" Jason can see the wheels turning in Tim's head.

Tim looks up at him. "You were there the whole time." It's not a question.

Jason leans back in his chair. "Interesting theory."

Tim watches him. "You're not going to tell me."

"You actually expect me to?"

Tim shakes his head. "After what we put you through? I'm just happy you're willing to talk to me at all. I was half expecting you to shoot me."

"In the middle of the day? On a crowded street? Being watched by half a dozen cameras? Not my style."

 _Not my style anymore, anyway._

By the look on Tim's face, he hears the unspoken words just fine but decides not to comment on it.

"Will you be working while you're in town?" Tim asks carefully.

"I'm not planning to."

"But you're still going to act if you stumble across something."

"Wouldn't you?"

Tim gives him an annoyed look. "You haven't given me a single concrete answer this entire conversation."

"Telling bats what you're up to usually doesn't end well." Jason counters.

Tim looks like he wants to argue but thinks better of it. "Just tell me this. Are you planning on attacking anyone in the family?"

"No," Jason answers honestly. "I didn't come here to pick a fight. I'm here to visit Abby. I'm not here to see anyone else."

"What about Alfred?"

"I don't have anything to say to him," Jason says evenly. There was a time where the very idea that he couldn't trust Alfred would have broken him, but that was a lifetime ago.

Tim looks floored. "What?!" He demands aghast.

"I not going to sit there and listen to him call Bruce my dad and call the manor my home. Neither of those things is true and I have a lot more respect for myself than that."

"That's… Fair." Tim manages. "I'll let him know."

"Good." Jason stands, rolling out his perpetually stiff shoulder. "Take care of yourself kid." He ruffles a very startled Tim's hair and disappears into the crowd.

* * *

Barbara watches the feed of Jason walking away from the deli. Tim sits there a while longer before leaving himself.

Barbara closes the feed and puts her head in her hands. She had recorded the entire conversation, every side-stepping word of it. Jason was well aware that he was being watched and clearly didn't trust them.

Not that he has any reason to.

She lifts her head and sighs. "Well?"

"Well, what?" Dick asks from his place behind her. Fully suited up.

"Are you going to leave him alone now?"

"He's family Babs, I can't just-"

"No," She cuts him off turning around to face him. "Harassing and cornering someone who you helped to throw into Arkham is not caring for someone."

"That's not- I can't give up on him! I won't!"

"Giving him some space and leaving him alone isn't giving up on him! It's respecting his wishes. He said that he was only here to visit Abby, until or unless that changes we will leave him alone. Understand?"

Dick grits his teeth. "He needs help-"

"And if he comes to us about it we will help him but until or unless that happens we leave him be."

Dick looks mutinous but Barbra doesn't give him a chance to argue.

"He doesn't trust us and he has no reason to. Hunting him down and cornering him will only drive him away. If he does need help he has people he can talk to. Abby is there for him. If he falls she will catch him. He has support he can call on if he needs it. He will be fine."

"You don't know that."

"I know that it won't be fine if you corner him."

For a long moment, Barbra and Dick just glare at each other. Then the monitors flash red as an alert pops up on screen.

Barbra spins around in time to watch live footage of Jason making his way across the bay to Arkham Island.

"You were saying?!" Dick snaps as he grapples up out of the clock tower.

"Don't make assumptions," Barbra responds over the coms, cold as ice. "That's what got us into this mess in the first place. How about we do our jobs and collect some evidence before pointing fingers?"

"Seriously? Jason's on Arkham. He has to be going after Joker. Why else would he be there?"

* * *

Jason watches Arkham's guards scurry around from his perch.

Right now they're probably scrambling to lock down the island and set up defenses around Joker. Jumping to conclusions and leaving his real target unguarded.

To be fair he didn't lie to Tim, he didn't come here to see anyone else except Abby, but a bloodstained cell in the bowels of Arkham doesn't really fall under the person category.

Getting past the guards is insultingly easy. The entrance to the tunnels is still there. It hasn't been touched. It doesn't take long for him to reach the iron door of his cell. He steels himself and pushes it open.

The door gives with a rusty shriek that echoes down the corridor. It takes everything he has to pass through the door and back into his nightmares.

Jason kneels on the floor of the cell. It's his blood that is sunk into these stones, that stains the entire room. He runs his fingers across the grooves in the floor. Over the innocuous metal rings that were used to chain him down so that Joker could carve those broken wings into the skin of his back. It was painstaking work that must have taken days if not weeks while Jason flitted in and out of consciousness as the biting cold metal cut into his skin over and over and over…

Pinned down, helpless, unable to move a single muscle, what few shreds left of his sanity fraying into almost nothingness. He wished for death a thousand times over in this cell. He'd relive that warehouse a thousand times over than ever endure what happened here again. He'd burn all over again without hesitation.

He died in this cell, he died here on the very stones that he was now kneeling. Crumbling under the steady, precise assault on every facet of him.

And yet, here he is. His mind is intact, his body is whole once again, his soul is still his own.

He burned in the Alley and rose, He burned in that warehouse and rose. He burned in this cell and rose. No matter what he must endure, what he has to survive, he rises from the ashes.

He lives, Jason Todd lives.

Jason raises his head. He sees the figures of Joker and Batman standing in front of him. Looming over him, looking down on him.

 _You didn't break me, you don't have the power. Neither of you does. I am free._

* * *

Abby runs through the halls of Arkham. The entire island is on lockdown and the Bats are searching the island.

She has to reach Jason before they do.

From the second that lockdown was called she knew who they were searching for. She knows that they're looking in the wrong place.

Abby reaches the out of the way supply closet and opens the secret passage.

Jason's not going after the Joker. He's done with him. He made his peace two years ago.

There is only one reason that he would come to Arkham. Only one thing he had yet to make peace with.

She runs at full speed through the pitch black corridor. She knows the tunnels by heart.

She knows what that cell is going to do to him.

If someone else finds him first- he's going to be disoriented, possibly hallucinating. He either won't be able to defend himself or will lash out in self-defense. If she doesn't reach him in time someone is going to die.

She stops running when she hears something. Shakey shallow breathing.

A hollow laugh. "You're the first one here. Looks like the world's got a new greatest detective."

Relief washes over her. "Jason." She kneels next to his slumped form. Right next to the entrance to his old cell. Just visible in the darkness. "Can you stand?"

"I doubt it."

Abby kneels down next to him. "Good thing I have plenty of practice lugging around 6ft, injured and don't know when to quit."

Jason laughs at that. "Yeah, you're always right there when I need you." Jason looks up at her kneeling over him. She's starting to be able to make out his features as her eyes adjust. "The Iron Lady of Arkham."

Abby sighs. "You too? I have no idea why the patients started calling me that."

"I can tell you," Jason says as he pushes himself up to lean against the wall. "You care, you want to help, but you're no bleeding heart apologist seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. You also aren't a hardened cynic determined to see the worst in them. You look at the worst that Gotham has to offer and you see them. You see the people. The good, the bad, the downright twisted and evil. You see it all and it doesn't phase you. You do the job and you do it well. I've seen the reports, the recent ones and the ones going back before I was sent here. Your first month here Zsasz got out of his cell and nearly killed you. After Batman took him down you just picked up your clipboard and went back to doing the rounds with blood on your lab coat. Nothing about your conduct changed, you didn't treat the inmates any differently. No matter what happens here you do your job and you do it well. You don't take place in the corruption here either. You are a good person, you have a heart of gold an iron will and a titanium backbone. You are the only good thing in this place. You are hope here. Unflinching, unwavering hope.

Jason leans his head back against the wall. Watching her with an unwavering gaze. "They know a savior when they see it."

Abby shakes her head. "I'm no savior, Jason."

He shrugs. "You were my savior."

Abby recoils. "What? Jason, no. You did this. Everything you've achieved since you escaped, that was because of you. You were the one who put yourself back together not me. You did this."

Jason shakes his head. "No, you _did_ save me. You always say that I did it all by myself but that's not true. You were there every single step of the way. You sat with me through my nightmares, you helped me unravel Joker's mind games, you listened as I told you every twisted thought in my head without condemnation or judgment. I owe you _everything_."

Before Abby can respond. Before she can even _attempt_ to process what Jason had just said. She hears something coming down the hallway. Something fast.

She feels Jason tense up next to her right as another figure comes into view.

Nightwing stops not ten feet from them. She can just make out his silhouette in the darkness.

Nightwing takes a step forward, his body language isn't hostile. It's open, friendly even. She doesn't need to be able to see his face to know he's smiling.

"Littlewing."

Jason jerks back, he's no longer leaning against the wall. He has his feet under him now. His posture is rapidly turning hostile.

She needs to diffuse this now.

Slowly Abby gets to her feet. Jason remains crouched down. She's not sure how mobile he is in this state and this isn't the time to find out. She needs to get him out of here before things get any worse.

Just as she is about to say something a shadow shoots out from the darkness and tackles Nightwing.

Immediately Jason pulls Abby back away from the scuffle. Then a red light flickers on revealing Black Bat pinning Nightwing to the ground and Spoiler standing next to them holding the light aloft.

"Hey, sorry about that," Spoiler says sheepishly. "We didn't realize he was headed down here until like 30 seconds ago. Are you guys ok?"

"Fine," Abby says breathing a sigh of relief as she steps out from behind Jason. Who has dropped his hostile stance but is no less wary.

Nightwing tries to say something but Black Bat taps him sharply on the head.

"No." Black Bat says firmly. "No more talk. No more hurt. Let him heal."

"Seriously," Spoiler says shaking her head. "In what universe does cornering Hood in Arkham end well?"

"So you weren't part of the search party up there?" Jason asks, speaking for the first time.

"Nope. Oracle sent us to make sure that something like this didn't happen," Spoiler says gesturing to Black Bat and Nightwing.

Nightwing tries to speak again but Spoiler cuts him off. "No, not another word. You came down here to do what exactly? Use the fact that he's trying to face what happened to him to force him to talk to you _after_ spending the last hour convinced that he was about to go on a killing spree? Ugh, you know what? Forget it. I'll let Alfred deal with you."

Spoiler turns back to Abby. "Sorry about that. Oh, hey I was meaning to ask you! Your one-year anniversary with your girlfriend is next month, right? Are you and Rose planning to do something special cause there's this new musical coming to the West end and I know that you two would love it!"

"Ah, no not at the moment," Abby says grateful for Stephanie's ability to redirect any conversation. "Trying to plan things never really ends well for us. Things always come up, you know how it is."

"Wait a second," Jason says as he turns to look at Abby. "Rose? Rose Wilson?"

Abby looks over at Jason. "Yeah... You're the one who told her that if she was ever in Gotham and she needed a place to crash that I was her best bet. Why are you so surprised?"

"I figured that you two would hit it off, I didn't expect you guys to start dating."

"They're this close to beating out Talia and Selenia for the top power couple of Gotham." Spoiler adds cheerfully.

"Your fingers are touching," Abby says dryly as she glances over at Spoiler. "And I seriously doubt that."

"You're the one with Deathstroke on speed dial." Spoiler points out. "That counts for a lot."

"Just in case of an emergency, I've only ever met him once!"

"Wait, you've met Deathstroke? When was this?" Jason asks.

"Well…" Abby trails off. How to explain that the most dangerous assassin on planet earth had broken into her apartment to interrogate her about her intentions towards his daughter without freaking Jason out?

As she tries to find a way to tell the story in the mildest terms possible she hears something coming down the hallway. Two sets of footsteps too fast to be anything but running.

In a heartbeat, Jason's gone. Tearing down the corridor and out of the dim red light emitting from Spoiler's hand. Abby watches as Jason disappears further into the tunnels and away from the rapidly approaching threat.

Abby sighs and turns back to face Spoiler and Black Bat finally letting Nightwing up. Batman and Robin appear behind them only seconds after Jason's footsteps drop off.

"Where is he?" Batman growls without preamble.

"Where's who?" Spoiler asks glaring up at him.

"He was just here," Nightwing's eyes haven't left the spot where Jason disappeared. "He can't have gotten far. If we move now we can still catch up to him-"

Black Bat cuts him off as she moves to the center of the corridor and crosses her arms. Placing herself between the Bats and the direction that Jason disappeared. "No," She says firmly.

"Ditto," Spoiler says as she and Batman continue to glare at each other.

Abby sighs and tunes out what will no doubt descend into another never-ending circle argument about how to handle Jason. She's had the misfortune to sit through a few of these since she started working with the Bats two years ago. Oracle, Red Robin, Spoiler, and Black Bat are solidly in the back-off and leave him be camp while Batman, Nightwing, and Robin want a more interventionist approach.

At least everyone agrees that Jason will never be imprisoned in Arkham again. Small mercies but it's a start.

Abby turns away from the Bats and towards the direction that Jason disappeared.

She has no doubt in her mind that he will make it off the island. Jason knows the tunnels under Arkham better than anyone but Killer Croc. He might have already made it in the short amount of time that the others have been arguing. She wouldn't be surprised. That's not what's bothering her.

Abby thinks back to the first time she found Jason down here. The state he'd been in, he had believed that she was another drug-induced hallucination. To when he first arrived at her apartment and later when he woke up he had been unsure if what he was seeing was real. To not long ago when he looked her in the eye and called her his savior.

She knew he lived a hard life with little to no support or comfort. She knew that he will always be wary of any and every kind word or act of support. Or she thought she had known. She clearly underestimated just how alien a helping hand is to him if even now, years later, he sees her sheltering him after his escape as the work of a "savior".

The very idea is enraging.

She flexes her hands to prevent them from curling into fists.

She hasn't been this angry since she watched Batman drag Joker back to Arkham, not an _hour_ after she found Jason for the first time.

Abby feels a hand tap her shoulder. She doesn't have to look to know that Black Bat is standing next to her. She can feel eyes boring into her back. She realizes that all the arguing has stopped.

"Abby?" Spoiler asks, clearly worried.

"He called me his savior," Abby says quietly as she turns to face the group, "What kind of life must he have endured to see basic human decency as something Biblical."

The clinically detached part of her brain registers the reactions. Nightwing flinches and shrinks in on himself. Spoiler shakes her head, clearly angry. Robin frowns, confusion evident in his expression. Batman is as impassive as ever.

Black Bat just nods unsurprised. "You help." She says simply as if that explains everything, and in a way it kinda did.

Abby smiles at her, "Thanks, Cass."

Then Abby turns to the rest of them. "I need to get back before I'm missed. Try not to throw the place into lockdown again before I get there." She says before sweeping past them and back towards the stairs.

* * *

Jason makes it out of the tunnels and into the cliffs in record time. He doesn't slow as light reaches through the darkness, hurling himself out into the open night air and grappling up to the tops of the cliffs.

He nails the landing only to trip over his own feet when his com comes to life.

"Graceful." Says the voice in his ear.

"You know me, Babs," Jason says as he tries to locate whatever camera has him in sight. "Always quick on my feet."

"I'll bet." She says, amused.

"What do you need, beautiful?" There's no way that this is a social call.

"Red Robin's on his way to you now with a clean jetski. B found the one you left down at the rocks, so we took it upon ourselves to provide you a new one."

"That's considerate you." He'll dump it the second he's across the bay. "So to what do I owe this random act of kindness?"

"It's a thank you." She says simply.

Okay… Now he's confused. "For what?

"For your restraint the night you escaped."

Jason freezes. There's no way she's thanking him for that...

Oracle continues. "If I were in the same position that you were that night... I doubt I would have stopped short of bringing the entire clocktower down."

Jason desperately wills the fried cogs in his brain to start moving again. "I didn't want you dead," Jason finally manages. "I just couldn't risk you finding me."

"Again, I doubt I would have shown the same restraint." She repeats calmly.

Jason closes his eyes. She gets it. Of course, she gets it. If anyone understands pure uncompromising rage it's Barbra Gordon.

"I'm still angry." He admits, "Being thrown in Arkham, and then... after. It's not something you just get over. I was delivered to the Joker on a silver plater and none of you lifted a finger to stop it."

"I know." She says, not a hint of defensiveness in her voice. "and, Jason. I owe you another thank you."

"Uh, I'm _pretty_ sure I haven't blown up anything else of yours lately."

She laughs. "You haven't. This is about something else. I was plugged into the security cameras at the Charity Gala."

Oh.

"Joker." He says warly.

"Yes." She confirms.

"Don't thank me for that." He says immediately. "Don't thank me for doing something I should have done _years_ ago."

"I won't." She assures him. "But I'm still grateful."

Jason lets out a breath, gratitude he can accept but thanks for finally taking down Joker... He can't take that. Not when he passed up the perfect chance to kill the clown before he even returned to Gotham. The worst part? He passed it up because it didn't fit with his grand scheme of a major showdown between him, Joker and Batman.

When he thinks about how many people the clown has killed since then… He's the last person anyone should be thanking for finally putting an end to that nightmare. That was a long time coming.

"Also," Her voice brings him out of his rapidly spiraling thoughts. "What you said before you attacked Joker…"

"You heard me." He's not surprised, he just wasn't expecting her to bring it up.

"I did." She confirms. "I recorded it actually."

"Of course." Why is he not surprised.

"You said that you weren't there for you. That you were there for the living, not the dead."

"Yeah…"

"You don't count as the living?"

"Nope. I don't really remember what living feels like, but it's not this." It can't be this.

"You'd be surprised," Barbra says softly.

Jason bites his tongue before he goes and says something stupid.

 _If Joker ever does get back up I'll kill him, and it won't be for me. He can't hurt me anymore. It's all faded scar tissue now. When I kill him It'll be for you. You and everyone else who has to keep on living with the pain he caused. There's no need to protect myself. I'm still dead. He can't touch me._

The sound of a rapidly approaching jetski cuts through the silence.

"Red's here," Jason says.

"Good," Her voice is all business again. "One more thing Jason. I want to make this clear before you drop off the map again. If anyone tries to come after you again, for whatever reason, it will be over my dead body."

He actually believes her. "Thanks, Babs."

"Go get'em boy wonder."

Jason grins as he drops down to the rocks below.

* * *

Tim pulls up to a rocky outcropping just as Jason lands.

Tim hops off the jetski and onto the rocks. "All yours and yes it's clean. I triple checked it."

"Good to know," Jason says as he takes a step towards the jetski only to stop and turn to Tim.

"That favor still open?"

"Of course," Tim says immediately. More than a little surprised that Jason's taking him up on it.

"What do you know about the Lazarus pit?"

Tim blinks. "It's a metaphysical substance that can heal any wound and bring people back from the dead but causes extreme anger upon doing so."

"Alright, that's accurate enough. You're missing a piece though. The anger that the Lazarus pit inspires in people, it's a lot easier to shake than you think. It's not a punishment or a payment, it's a safeguard. It's for…" Jason stops searching for the right words.

"You've watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer right?" Jason asks suddenly, the non-sequitur throwing Tim for a loop.

"Uh, yeah. What does that have to do with the Lazarus pit?" Tims says seriously confused.

"You remember the third episode of the sixth season, the very end when Buffy is talking to Spike about coming back from the dead?"

"The one where she tells him that she came back from heaven so now she's in hell… _Oh._ " Tim's voice drops off as his mind screeches to a halt.

Oh no.

Oh, _fuck._

Jason nods grimly. "I don't remember much about the year I was dead. I have no clue what's on the other side or where I was or anything, but I do know that wherever I was, I was safe and I knew I was safe. Not like post patrol back in the Batcave safe or just come down from fear gas safe but really truly _safe._ Nothing could get me and I knew it."

"I was at peace, and now I'm not."

"Death and dying really aren't that bad. Even dying in an explosion and feeling shrapnel tear through you while you burn alive… Once you get past all of the pain and fear, you know that it's going to end. Dying ends when you die, but coming back to life? That first breath you take when you wake up. That's pain. I literally died in a fire and it doesn't even come close to what I feel every second of every day."

"Living through your death, living in constant all-consuming pain because you're not supposed to be here. Christ, suicidal doesn't even begin to cover it."

"That's why the Lazurus pit makes you angry. It's a failsafe so the person brought back doesn't _kill themselves._ It's easy to push the anger away, you just don't want to. For the longest time being angry at the world was a hell of a lot better than dealing with the pain. The only people who got hurt were rapists and child molesters, but it wasn't sustainable. Things went sideways and I knew I couldn't let the pit control me anymore. No matter how much pain I'm in."

"What changed?" Tim found himself asking before he could stop himself. If Jason really is in constant metaphysical pain as a result of his resurrection what could have possibly happened to make him give up the only thing that could make the pain stop.

For a moment Jason just looks at him, then.

"Tim, I nearly killed you and I don't remember a thing."

Tim feels the world fall out from under him.

"When I woke up after attacking you at Titan's tower I had no memory of what happened. Just a few dozen bruises and one hell of a headache. I knew I must have gone on a pit fueled bender but the previous night was a complete blank. I was used to it at that point so I pulled up the feed from my helmet to figure out what the hell I did the night before."

"I spent the next hour watching footage of me beating you to a pulp. I pulled the tapes from the tower, hacked Bat and League communications, recorded every single scratch I had and It all matched up. I attacked you, an innocent kid, and I don't remember it. At all."

"After that, I did everything I could to not give into the anger. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn't and people got hurt again, but I kept fighting it. I'm still fighting it. I don't know if It'll take over again but If it does I need your help to deal with it.

"If I start going off the rails again call Talia. Don't let the Bats or the League or the Titans or any other superhero squad deal with me. If they get their hands on me they're just going to throw me in some mental facility, run me through a bunch of tests, try a bunch of different drugs and none of it is going to work because there's no cure for being alive."

"Or if I'm really unlucky someone's going to call Martian Manhunter or Zatanna or Raven to root around inside my head and if they somehow get past all the blocks and walls I've put in there. Some of the things I've lived through... Fuck, no one should have to go through that, even second hand. My head is not someplace you can just poke around in and it's going to do serious damage to whoever tries and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. No one deserves this." Jason says quietly staring down at his hands.

Tim has to take a moment to wrench his rapidly careening train of thought back on track.

How much of this could have been prevented if they had just considered the possibility that the trauma of _resurrection_ might have been a factor in Jason actions.

Tim shoves that though out of his head. He'll deal with the implications of all this later. Right now Jason's here asking for his help.

"Of course, I assume Talia has an emergency line set up."

"Yeah, Selina can put you in contact." Jason sounds drained and Tim can't really blame him. He's been carrying this all by himself for _years_ and they had no clue.

An alarm goes off in Tim's ear. Damn it, Bruce.

"You need to go now!" Tim says hurling a trio of smoke bombs into the cliffs.

Jason climbs onto the jetski and guns it just as the smoke bombs detonate blanketing the area in dense smoke.

Tim doesn't even flinch when Batman appears out of the smoke.

"Where is he going?"

"He didn't say," Tim says evenly.

Batman doesn't respond but Tim knows that hand movement.

"Try to call the Batwing and I will drop an EMP," Tim warns, thoroughly done with everything that's happened today.

"Thank you, Master Timothy." Alfred's voice comes over the coms. "I think that is quite enough nonsense for one day. I expect you all back at the cave immediately. I would like a word with you all."

Tim can't hold back a smile as Batman stiffens.

Jason's safe, for now.

Time to make sure he stays that way.


	14. What you Deserve

Part 2:

Alfred is somehow managing to look down his nose at Dick and Bruce despite the height differences.

"I trust that this afternoon's events were a lapse in judgment brought about by the unexpected circumstances of Master Jason's sudden trip to Arkham. As the reason for his visit has been revealed to have no relation to the Joker or for any other purpose that would have required intervention I trust that all of you will be leaving Master Jason be for the duration of his visit."

Dick immediately tries to protest but a single raised eyebrow cuts him off.

"I am not arguing about putting Arkham on lockdown as a result of Master Jason's arrival there, Master Richard. That is not the issue here. The issue is that once Master Timothy and Miss Barbra discovered the reason for Master Jason's visit you took it upon yourself to corner him _despite_ the fact that he had just entered the cell where he had endured unimaginable suffering as a result of our incompetence. In addition, Miss Abigail was already present and handling the situation. Your arrival could have escalated the situation drastically. I trust you will not go looking for him again."

Alfred turns his gaze on Bruce. "Either of you."

Dick can hear Bruce grinding his teeth but he says nothing.

"Uh, hang on," Stephanie says from her place perched on a railing next to Cass. "Do all of us lose pastry privileges because of those two or are the members of the Jason defense squad exempt?"

Jason defense squad? Dick thinks, bewildered as he watches Alfred hand both Steph and Cass a tin of cookies each. As well as two extra tins labeled for Tim and Barbra.

Tim had begged out of returning to the cave in favor of going to the Clocktower instead, saying that he needed to work on a time-sensitive lead and refused to elaborate. Barbra had locked down the Clocktower and forbidden anyone from following Tim or interfering.

Damian watches the exchange between Alfred and the girls with uncharacteristic reservation. He frowns to himself before turning and walking off to the locker room.

On any other day, Dick would have gone after him but today he has a bigger threat to face.

Jason is somewhere in Gotham. He's back after two years of silence and less than an hour ago he was less than five feet away.

Now he's disappeared again. He's somewhere in Gotham and they have no clue where he is or what he's up to.

This can't continue.

Dick makes his way out of the cave, disabling his trackers as he goes.

Jason is an unknown. A volatile, dangerous unknown that has attacked an tried to kill most of them at one point or another.

Yes, putting him in Arkham was the wrong call and the worst decision they have ever made regarding Jason in a long line of poor choices, and Dick is well aware just who many of those decisions were his.

They way he treated Jason when he first arrived and became Robin… He had been mad at Bruce for taking the identity he had created, the name his mother had given him, and gave it to someone else without asking him. He had found out about the new Robin from the newspaper. He had been livid, but it was way out of line to take it out on some kid who didn't know anything about where the name "Robin" came from.

He had treated that kid, his little brother, with scorn and anger and left him with Bruce. Bruce who becomes emotionally distant the second things get difficult, who has some of the worst control issues on planet earth, who sets unreasonable expectations and couldn't offer a kind word when you hit them. That is who he left that twelve-year-old kid with.

Things _had_ smoothed out over the years that followed but they had never been on solid ground.

Then Jason had died.

Every grievance he once had with Jason seemed so small, so petty and useless. A fifteen-year-old kid was dead at the hands of a mad man and nothing was ever going to be alright.

A thousand regrets and a few years later Jason came back and it was a nightmare.

Within a few weeks of Jason's arrival in Gotham, the city had turned upside down. Half of the drug trade in Gotham was under his thumb and he was going to war with Black Mask over the other half. Bodies were piling up left and right with no signs of stopping.

Bruce and Dick had fought him at every turn. Trying to put a stop to the nightmare. Trying to get through to Jason, to help him, to bring him home.

Then the attack at Titan's tower and the stakes skyrocketed.

Jason wasn't just attacking those who got in his way. He had gone out of his way to hunt down and attack Tim. They couldn't afford to hold back any longer. They had to stop him.

Jason had scaled back his operations following the attack on Titan's tower. Becoming harder and harder to track. That tip had been one in a million chance but the information was right on target. They managed to take Jason down in seconds. The nightmare was finally over. Or so he had thought.

When he thinks about how much time he had spent scouring the city the day of Jason's 'escape' he wants to scream. Hours, days, and weeks spent searching for Jason when he was right where they had left him. The last place they should have put him. Right in Joker's hands. The. Entire. Time.

Only, by the time they learned the truth, the whole ugly truth, Jason was long gone. Disappearing once again, leaving Joker's paralyzed body and a whole host of new regrets. To make matters worse not everyone wanted to look for him.

Lines were drawn, each side as unmoving as the other. Only the lack of leads, the investigation into Arkham, and the promise of sabotage from both Barbra and Talia were the only things that kept him from searching out Jason on his own.

Now Jason is back.

He gets the logic of leaving Jason be and only interfering when things go south. He gets it because that is what he did for _years._ He stood back when Jason was Robin, he stood back when Jason returned from the dead. All that strategy had gotten him is an ever-growing pile of regrets and every time Jason has suffered. He can't keep making the same mistakes. He has to find Jason.

He has to find his brother.

Find him and bring him home.

* * *

Jason doesn't know why ice baths work.

You'd think being submerged in water would send him spiraling back to being dunked in the Lazarus pit or being waterboarded by Joker but nope. He's fine.

It helps with the pain.

Not the pain that he can barely describe or understand. There's no help for that. He's talking about the pain that comes from 40% of his body being covered in scar tissue.

When he first got away from Gotham following his takedown of Joker at the Gala he'd have to take one every day as his body slowly adjusted to life on the move. Now he's down to a couple of times a month to dull the ache in his bones.

He was hoping that he'd be able to get through his visit to Gotham without having to take an ice bath, he's well aware of the disadvantage he's at in nothing but boxers and a few gallons of ice water but after returning to his safe house his body hadn't left much room for negotiation.

Jason leans his head back against the lip of the tub. He had set up his big metal tub of ice water in the center of the loft, right under the skylight. Resting on a stool right next to the tub is a towel and his sidearm.

He's well aware of the eyes on him.

He's guessing it's either Bruce or Dick.

A part of him wants to sink under the water just ignore whoever is creeping on him but the rest of him knows better. They're not going to stay up there forever. Sooner or later they're going to get in.

He'd rather it be on his terms.

Jason takes a deep breath and hauls himself out of the tub.

* * *

He wasn't prepared for the scars.

Dick didn't know what he was expecting when he finally located Jason's safehouse but finding Jason lounging in an ice bath wasn't it.

Said ice bath being in the middle of the safehouse in plain view of the skylight.

There was a gun within reach but other than that Jason's completely defenseless.

It felt like a trap.

Minutes ticked by until Jason finally pulled himself out of the tub.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. Dick saw the cell under Arkham where Jason had been held. Where Joker tortured him for a year. Of course, Jason wouldn't have come away unscarred. But this…

He's going to be sick.

Jason's body is covered in scars. Some of them he recognizes from fighting with Jason before Arkham but the rest of them are new. The clean straight lines of knife wounds are too clean to be anything but the result of torture. Same with irregular patches of scar tissue that scream of blunt force trauma. The small circles of cigaret burns and irregular zigzags of electrical burns. A road of overlapping smiley faces travels up his left arm from wrist to shoulder. "HaHaHa" is carved into the flesh above his hip. Right below his collarbone the words "Dead bird walking" stretch across his chest. On his back, two broken wings reach from the tops of his shoulders to the small of his back. The scars are everywhere. A roadmap of pain and suffering, a year's worth of torture at the hands of a madman.

Jason finishes toweling off and pulls on a pair of black pants and a grey T-shirt.

Jason finally raises his head and looks directly at him.

Dick's heart stops as his eyes land on his little brother's face.

Bellow Jason's left eye is a brand. The letter J stares back at him. J for Joker.

Green eyes gaze back at him from above the brand, guarded and emotionless. Almost bored.

"You coming in or what?"

Dick take a breath, it's now or never. He pries open a panel in the skylight and drops down into the room.

Dick lands just five feet away from Jason. Finally in reach. He can do this. He can bring his brother back home.

Dick can't help but smile despite the circumstances.

"Littlewing, how are you?"

"Surviving."

"That's good. You look good."

"You've picked an interesting time to start caring."

Dick frowns. "I've always cared, Jason."

"Have you?"

Dick tries again. "You're my brother, Jason. Of course, I care."

Jason just watches him, arms crossed, expression guarded and distant.

Finally. "Why did you come here, Dick?"

Dick steels himself. "I'm here to bring you home."

Jason tilts his head. "Why?"

The question throws Dick off. "What do you mean why? You're family, you should be home. The manor is where you belong."

Jason's eyes narrow. "I don't belong anywhere, Dick, and I'm not setting foot in that mausoleum."

Dick sighs. "Jason, we can just let you stay in Gotham without-"

"I'm not staying in Gotham."

Dick stops short. "What?"

"I'm not staying in Gotham," Jason says again. "I'll be gone before the week is out."

Dick is floored. "What!?" He demands.

"You already said that," Jason says dryly.

"That's not- Jason you can't just leave!" Dick tries to regain his footing.

"Why not?"

"Jason you need help-"

"I'm getting help."

"Since when? From who?"

"You really expect me to answer that?"

So he's not getting help, then. "Jason you really need to let us help you-"

"Really? This coming from the guy who not 24 hours ago thought I was going after the Joker?"

"You broke into Arkham what was I supposed to think?!"

"Tim and Barbra managed to put it together ok."

"They don't know you like I do."

"You don't know me at all."

"That," a familiar voice cuts in, "Is something we can both agree on."

Red Robin drops down from the ceiling. Landing off to the side of them.

"Tim, what are you doing here?" Dick asks. Nowhere near comfortable with Jason being this close to Tim.

"I came to talk to Jason about-" Tim's words stumble as his eyes land on the brand on Jason's face. "-about the information he passed to me," Tim finishes. Like they were discussing any other case.

"What information?" Dick asks glancing between the two. "When was this?"

Tim doesn't respond, turning to Jason. "I briefed Oracle and Black Bat, Oracle is talking to your contact and putting contingency plans in place. We'll handle it."

Jason nods. "I appreciate it."

Tim turns to Dick. "You shouldn't be here."

"This is _exactly_ where I should be."

"No, it really isn't."

"What about you?" Dick shoots back. "Do you really think _you_ should be here?"

Tim sighs. "This again?"

"Yes, this again! You can't just act like it's not a possibility."

"This is getting old, Dick. You really think that Jason's going to attack me the first chance he gets?"

"Tim, he tried to kill you!"

Tim isn't phased. "So has Damian, repeatedly in fact."

"Damian didn't know any better-"

"Doesn't know any better, he still never passes up the opportunity to tell me how useless I am and how much better we'd be without me. He'd happily see me dead. Out of the two Robins that have tried to kill me Jason has only attacked me once and is the only one who regrets it."

"I do. Regret it." Jason says quietly, drawing their attention. "I wish it had never happened. I am sorry Tim."

"I know," Tim says softly. "I forgive you."

Dick can't believe what he's hearing. "That doesn't make it ok!"

"Enough." Tim's voice rings out, cold as ice.

Dick takes a step back. "Tim..."

"No. I don't need protecting. I don't need saving. Not from Jason and definitely not by you."

"That's not what this is about." Dick desperately tries to make Tim understand. "We can't let him go again. He needs help, he has to come home. We can still fix things."

"Can we? Every decision we've made hasn't just been misinformed or wrong, it's been _devastating._ He doesn't want our help, Dick. We have no right to try and force it on him either."

"I'm pretty sure Jason can speak for himself, Tim." Dick shoots back.

"He has, you just haven't been listening," Tim responds without missing a beat.

Jason lets out a startled laugh breaking them out of their standoff. "As much fun as listening to this back and forth is, and I really do hate to break this up, but I think that both of us have better things to do than try to drum the concept of personal boundaries through Dick's thick skull."

"That's not what I-" Dick begins then cuts himself off as Jason takes a step towards Tim.

Dick tenses, ready to put himself between Jason and Tim.

Tim glares at him and closes the distance between himself and Jason before Dick can take a step.

"Here," Jason holds out a thumb drive to Tim.

"This is all the data I've gathered on the issue. Along with a few other factors that have the potential to influence things one way or another."

Tim takes the thumb drive with a gravity reserved for doomsday devices and kryptonite.

"I'll get this to Oracle immediately. We'll find a way to contain this."

"Contain what?!" Dick demands only for both of them to ignore him. What is going on?

Black Bat drops down from the roof.

Tim sighs, "Already?" Black Bat nods her head before turning to glare at Dick.

"Don't tell me, B's here." Jason doesn't sound surprised.

"Two rooftops that way, he's holding position for now but that could change at any second," Tim responds, not looking up from his wrist computer.

Jason just sighs, "Better get this over with, then." Pulling on a grey hoodie and a pair of combat boots before grabbing his grapple and his sidearm.

Before Dick can protest, Cass walks up to Jason.

For a moment they just watch each other then Cass places her hand on Jason's chest, right over his heart.

"Was hidden before. Buried. Couldn't see. Can see now."

Cass tilts her head up and looks Jason in the eye. White lenses vs green.

"I'm sorry." She whispers.

Jason places his hand over hers. "It's not your fault."

"Here now. No more hurt."

Jason actually smiles. "Thank you."

With that Jason grapples up and out of the room.

Dick watches the entire exchange growing more confused by the second. What is she talking about? Cass can read anyone's body language like an open book. It's her first language. What couldn't she see before? What was buried?

He's missing things. Big things. Important things.

Tim turns and holds out the thumb drive to Cass. "Take this straight to Oracle. Don't let anyone else get their hands on it."

Cass nods seriously, tucking the thumb drive away before grappling up to the roof and taking off into the night.

Dick watches her go feeling like he's standing on a rickety bridge surrounded by fog. Any step he takes is a risk and he has no idea where these steps are leading him.

Tim sighs. "Dick, this isn't something we can fix. Not after the role we played. He doesn't trust us."

"But he is talking to you," Dick responds. Clinging to that one fact.

"It's not because he trusts me, he doesn't. I told him if he needed help with something while he's in town I'd be there for him and I left him alone. He had something that he couldn't handle on his own and he asked me for help with it. That's all we can do. Be there for him when he asks."

"There has to be more."

"Three years ago maybe there was. The situation's changed, we have to change with it."

Tim grapples up to the roof and disappears. Leaving Dick in an empty apartment with a new host of regrets.

* * *

It didn't take long to find Jason's safe house. It's the same one he was using three years ago.

He knows that Jason's inside. He knows that Dick entered the building not ten minutes ago and Tim arrived five minutes after that.

He doesn't know what's happening inside.

He doesn't know what Jason is doing. He doesn't know how Jason will react. He doesn't have any frame of reference for what to expect.

It's been a running theme for the last few years.

The evidence that Tim and Barabra had collected was concrete and irrefutable. The information provided by Abby was even more damning. In the weeks following the incident at the charity gala, they descended on Arkham. They turned over every stone, checked every report, shone a light into every corner.

What they found was sickening.

Purposeful misdiagnosis, human experimentation, abuse of patients, corruption on a scale that was rampant even for Gotham.

That was the nightmare he subjected his son to.

Jason had survived, somehow. Escaping undetected the night of Joker's attack on the island. Freeing himself from the Joker when he never should have been anywhere near the clown in the first place.

He was the one who put Jason within the Joker's reach.

He was the one who made the call that Jason was too much of a threat to Gotham, too much of a threat to the family, to be allowed to roam free any longer. He was the one who decided to bring Jason to Arkham. He was the one who misjudged the real threat.

He is responsible for everything Jason has suffered since he was dragged through those iron gates.

Black Bat appears in front of him. Head titled in a silent question.

"I'm not here for a fight." He tells her.

"You are." She responds immediately. "Want fight. Want pain. Want guilt to go away."

She takes a step forward. "Want Jason to take anger out on you." She accuses.

He doesn't deny it. He can't. It's the truth. He doesn't see this meeting going down any other way. Jason is going to be angry, has every right to be angry, and there's a high chance that he will take that rage out on anyone who gets in his way.

Bruce can't let anyone else bear the brunt of that.

Black Bat takes a step back. He body language reading shock and surprise. "Wrong." She growls. "Won't hurt us. Doesn't _want_ to hurt us. Wants to be left alone."

"I can't do that." Because he can't. He can't let this go. He needs to see his son. He needs to hear what Jason has to say. Even if it's to tell him that he hates him.

Black Bat shakes her head and turns away. "Hurt him and I tell Alfred." She says before swinging over to Jason's safehouse.

Black Bat drops down into the Apartment. A few minutes later Jason appears.

He's not wearing any gear or armor. Just the same grey sweatshirt and black pants he wore when infiltrated Arkham. The only weapon on his is his sidearm and-

His eyes land on Jason's face.

A brand, most likely caused by a branding iron, sits under Jason's left eye. The letter J has been permanently branded into Jason's skin.

Bile rises in his throat. It takes everything he has not to react.

Jason grapples over and lands on the edge of the rooftop. Just out of the range of a lunge.

"Let me guess. You want me to return to the manor and submit to an unending parade of psychological exams." Jason says as he hops down off the ledge.

Bruce wants to say that he'll never try to force him to come home. That he'll never pressure Jason into getting psychiatric help. That he'll never hurt him again.

He doesn't say any of that. Instead, he says, "It's where you belong."

"Nightwing said that too," Jason says matter-of-factly. "Of course, a little over three years ago he also said that Arkham was where I belonged. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't trust his judgment on this. Or yours."

Before Bruce can respond Jason continues.

"So, stepping past the fact that I'm not going back to the manor and never will, let's get to the real reason your here. You think I'm here to get revenge on you and the rest of the family for putting me in Arkham and you're here to put a stop to it before it begins. Does that about cover it?"

Jason's words are flippant and relaxed, just like his body language. It puts Bruce on edge more than the anger he was expecting.

"I just wanted to make sure that you're ok," Bruce says, willing Jason to hear the truth in his words.

Jason just watches him. "You realize how little reason I have to believe that, right?"

"I do," Batman admits, watching Jason's reaction.

Jason's unmoved. "So you _know_ that I have no reason to trust you and yet here you are. What are you trying to do B?"

The question catches him off guard. "I'm here to see my son."

Jason closes his eyes. "I have no reason to believe that either."

That cuts deeper than anything else Jason had said. "You _are_ my son." He insists.

Jason shakes his head. "One second you're saying that like it's the only thing that matters and the next you're damning everything I am a treating me like a threat. Seriously, just pick one. The emotional whiplash got old years ago."

Jason's tired and reserved tone slices deeper than the words. There's no heat behind them like it's not worth arguing over. Meaningless. Like denying his family the easiest thing in the world.

"Jason-" He tries again but Jason cuts him off.

"Oh, no you don't. I have some things I need to get off my chest. You are going to stand there and listen and not interrupt me or try to censure me until I'm done."

Jason's pauses, searching for the right words.

"I don't blame you for my death, I never have. You, on the other hand, you can't let it go. To you, the fact that I died on your watch is unforgivable. So you project that onto me. Convince yourself that I blame you for it, that it's the reason behind everything I've done. It was never about me forgiving you it's about the fact that you can't forgive yourself. For the record, there's nothing to forgive. It wasn't your fault. Arkham on the other hand. That was your fault. You gave me to the Joker on a silver platter. Everything I suffered in that cell is on you."

"I wasn't insane. Anger issues? Yes. PTSD? In spades. Criminally insane? No. But now, after a year in Arkham? I have sociopathic tendencies that are triggered by high stress. It's the reason why fear gas doesn't work on me anymore. I can't feel fear at that level of intensity, I can't feel _anything_ at that level of intensity. It's completely psychological and not related to the Lazarus Pit so you can stop reaching for your needles, I saw your hand twitch. My brain literally rewired itself as a last line of defense. My only chance for survival when I was facing down Harley Quinn in that cell, that file in her hands. She took my mind apart piece by piece, targeting my weak spots; My temper, my relationship with you, what happened to me in the alley. There's nothing like your murderer's brainwashed girlfriend reading off some of your worst memories out of a file that was provided by someone you trusted, thanks for that by the way."

"You've spent the past 6 years making my death all about you. Well, you can stop now. I guarantee that projecting your problems is just going to make things worse. Trust me, I would know. I did it to you. I wanted to kill the Joker but I was too scared, too terrified to stop him so it got all twisted up and projected onto you. I wanted you to kill him. I wanted you to _want_ to kill him, to solve my problems for me. Didn't do me any good unless you count knocking a few pints of blood out of me."

"You always told me that I needed to let go of my past, my anger. What do you think I've been doing for the past two years? I'm traveling the world and working towards a degree. I am living my life. I moved on. I dealt with it. I walked into the ruins of that warehouse in Ethiopia and put it to rest. Less than 24 hours ago I walked into that cell under Arkham and put it to rest! You know what really gets under my skin. You tell people to move on, the past is past get over it, but you can't do it yourself. You never even tried!"

"I got out of the alley but you never will. You are still that nine-year-old kid. Desperate to control everything around you to stop the worst night of your life from happening again, but that's not how life works. You have no say over who lives or dies. None. If that's how you want to live your life then it's none of my business, but I won't let you control me. I won't let anyone control me!"

The silence is deafening, Jason is breathing hard but he recovers quickly. His body language shifting back to a relaxed stance. His anger dissipating into the night.

"Alright, done. Said all I had to say. Feel free to dismiss all of it and brood for the rest of my visit. Just don't start cutting into my time with Abby. I don't know when I'll be seeing her again after this, I don't want to waste any time. I did enough of that already."

With that Jason begins to walk away towards the edge of the building. Bruce can't let him leave just yet.

"Why didn't you kill the Joker?"

Jason stops. He turns around with a sigh. "Of course."

"Jason, why?" He asks. Clinging to that bit of hope that hadn't left him since the night Jason had spared the Joker. The hope that maybe he could bring Jason back. That he could still reach him.

Jason gives him an unreadable look. "Because you two deserve each other."

A freight train would have hit with less force. All the air is driven from his lungs as Jason's words sink in.

"What? You thought I didn't kill him because I saw the light or something? No. I didn't kill him because death is too good for him. The living aren't done with him yet. He doesn't _get_ to die. I left him in a living hell tailored just for him, a fate worse than death. Just like you. With him alive, you're in a hell of your own making. Who am I stop you?"

"Now, I have a life to live and a big sister to tease about her girlfriend. So if you'll excuse me."

With that Jason grapples away and Batman falls to his knees as his entire world shatters.

* * *

Alfred is making is last round through the cave when he spots a figure slumped in front of the Bat-computer.

Alfred just sighs. "I trust that master Jason emerged from that conversation in a better state than you did."

Bruce raises his head slightly. The cowl has been pulled back and his eyes are distant.

"Jason left the Joker alive so he would suffer." The words are dead and lifeless.

Alfred is unsurprised. "Yes, that holds with what he said at the gala."

Confused eyes meet his.

"He said that the dead were at peace and it was the living who still suffered." Alfred reiterates. "It is unlikely that he would show mercy to a monster who had done so much harm to so many."

Bruce drops his head into his hands.

Alfred busies himself with tidying up the various cups and dishes scattered about the console.

Just as the last dish is put away Bruce raises his head again.

"What do I do now?"

"I'm afraid that there is nothing to do," Alfred says evenly. "Jason has moved on and made his peace. The life he seeks to build does not include us. Moreover, his decision to distance himself is not a recent or sudden decision."

"How do you know that?"

"Jason sent me a message a few hours after he left the city after the gala. He asked me to protect Miss Abigail from any reprisal for her part in assisting in his recovery before thanking me for everything I had done for him. Master Timothy confirmed earlier today, or more accurately yesterday, that Master Jason has no intention of seeking me out or speaking with me, which confirmed my suspicions that that message he sent me two years ago was his way of closing this particular chapter in his life and moving forward."

"Since Master Jason first arrived I have always tried to remind him that he always has a place here, that this will always be his home and we will always be his family, but I'm afraid that it's not had the intended effect."

"I spoke to Miss Abigail about it and she informed me that Master Jason most likely sees any connecting to this family not as a comfort, but as a noose waiting to hang him at first misstep. That we represent not safety but danger, and after sending him into the Joker's hands it is a hard point to argue against."

"What we must come to terms with now is that we don't know this Jason. He has rebuilt himself time after time, the boy we remember is not the man before us now."

"He may return to us, he may not, but he will not return simply because he is told that this is where he belongs. He has been burned far too many times to trust our words."

For a long time, Master Bruce is silent. "Then, how do we convince him to come home?"

"Don't tell him that there is something to come home to. Build something that he would _want_ to come home to," Alfred replies simply. Picking up the tray of dishes and returning to the manor. Leaving Bruce with a thoughtful expression.

* * *

Abby trudges up the stairs to her apartment. Jason had intercepted her when she got off work and insisted on taking her out to dinner before he left. Three hours, two restaurants, one nightclub, and a tour of the city by motorcycle later he dropped her off in front of her apartment with a promise to keep in touch before speeding off into the first light of the morning.

Abby enters her apartment and puts the leftovers in the fridge.

"Jason's not here." She says when the looming shadow in the corner stays silent.

"I know," Batman takes a step out of the corner. "That's not why I'm here."

Abby turns around, more than ready to tell him off but stops when she sees the cowl is pulled back. Tired but determined blue eyes stare back at her.

"I think… I think I need to talk to you." He says, carefully.

Abby sets down her bag and watches him closely in return. After a few moments, she nods, flips the little bat symbol light in the window off and takes a seat on the couch.

"I'm all ears."


End file.
